


John, Damned

by Domino_Darkwolf



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Demons, Gen, Good vs Evil, I don't know what to tag for this one, I will add tags as I go, I'm Bad At Summaries, I'm Bad At Tagging, I'm Bad At Titles, John Winchester is a Demon, John Winchester regrets things, Penance - Freeform, Supernatural - Freeform, but i swear i'm a decent writer, conflicting emotions, demon nature vs hunter nature, it will be dark and hopefully a little crushing, this is not a warm and fuzzy fic, vengeance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-09
Updated: 2016-09-02
Packaged: 2018-05-25 18:08:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 13
Words: 34,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6205399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Domino_Darkwolf/pseuds/Domino_Darkwolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>That wasn't the kind of person I was. John Winchester would never kill an innocent human for any reason, including getting to the demon under its skin. He would have let the demon go tell Crowley, would have greeted the armies of Hell head-on. But I wasn't John Winchester anymore. I was what was left of him.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AlexHamato](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlexHamato/gifts).



> Hey, all! Welcome to another fanfic. I just wanted to say thanks for checking it out, and to give a shoutout to Cliophilyra for betaing!  
> I'm not totally certain there's going to be a major character death, but I've ticked the box so no one gets upset if it does happen. This story is a work in progress, but, at this point, it doesn't feel like the ending will be warm and fuzzy.  
> Additionally, while I'm not painting John in what would be considered a "heroic" light, I'm also by no means bashing the man. If you dislike, detest or in any way despite John Winchester, this story may not be for you. Or it could be. Just don't read this expecting me to lay the hate on.  
> 

The second time I fell was different than the first. The first time, Azazel dragged me down so fast that I couldn't see anything but the furious light surrounding us in a dizzying vortex of blazing yellow and choleric red. The tyrant with marbled yellow eyes presented me Alistair and left me to suffer at the hands of the torture master for a century.  
The second time — just after I'd helped my boys finish what old Yellow Eyes had started all those years before — I was unescorted. There was no powerful demon overlord whisking me through the underworld, no guide leading me to damnation. The second time, I just… fell.

Literally.

I descended backwards at a sluggish pace, slipping through a hot abyss of murky green clouds so thick it felt like I was sinking into a dismal sea. A powerful stench of sulfur closed its fingers around my throat and choked me until I could barely breathe. Piercing screams and hopeless wails bellowed up from below, thousands of voices crying out in the bitter darkness. When the filthy smog gradually began to thin, faint figures and shapes took form amidst the green veil; silhouettes of suspended cages crammed full of writhing souls, chains flaunting bloody bodies fashioned to meathooks, jutting spears and pointed lances impaling living carcasses that convulsed and howled and begged for a death that would never come.

The thick, sulfuric fog began to dissipate the further down I fell, and once I'd cleared the sooty clouds, gravity readjusted itself. I swiftly dropped the rest of the way, and landed with a sickening crunch into a crater of naked, anguished souls that stretched on as far as I could see. They clawed at me with bony fingers and sharp nails. They grabbed at my limbs, and tore at my clothing, trying to drag me down into the depths of the fleshy sea. For a minute, I almost let them. I was, after all, damned; what other choice did I have?

And then I remembered; I am John fucking Winchester. And I wasn't going to let Hell hold me.


	2. Coming Home

**1080 Years Later  
(9 years topside)**

A man — or at least something that vaguely resembled one — leaned against a rough, gray stone wall. His sunken red eyes stared down at his smoky, blackened fingers with a demeanor that was almost too casual to be truly relaxed. He was waiting for something, for someone, and his plans were taboo.

This demon, would be the first person — former person — to see me in over a millennia.

The idea of escaping Hell was nerve-wracking enough to make me want to throw up, and I might have if I’d had anything to eat in the past thousand years. After all the running, all the shadows I’d hidden in and walls I’d crept behind, I was finally facing my freedom. I just had to show myself to one little crossroads demon.

I revealed my presence by silently stepping out from the shadows of the cave-like hall, appearing as if from nowhere. He jumped in surprise, but instantly began to relax when he realized I was not one of his superiors. A sly grin slid across his lipless mouth.

"Bram, I presume," I spoke with an unwavering confidence that I didn’t feel, my voice harsh, tarnished by my demonic condition.

"Who might you be?" the demon Bram asked, eyeing my blackened wispy form.

"Maddox." I supplied him with the name I had given my new self. My demon self.

"You don't look familiar," Bram said as he studied my sunken face with narrowed eyes.

"No?" I affected a bored tone. "Word is you've been smuggling demons topside."

"Maybe," Bram replied with an air of suspicion. "What's it to you?"

"I want a ride out," I said in a low voice. 

A greedy gleam sparked in his eye. "It'll cost you."

"I can pay."

Bram nodded. He glanced about our surroundings, checking for unwelcome eyes and ears. Once he was sure that we were alone, he clamped his right hand on my left shoulder.

"Bend your knees," he advised.

"Wait." I said. I patted the side of my leg and called, "Come here, girl."

A hellhound bounded out from the same shadows I had been lurking in. She greeted me happily, sitting down in the space between Bram and myself and looking up expectantly. She came up just to my knees; a runt by hellhound standards.

“No way," Bram shook his head. “No hellhounds.”

“I’ll pay you double,” I offered.

“Nope.”

“Triple.”

An impish half-smirk flashed across the demon’s face. He glanced between me and the hound I called Freya before deciding to bend his own rule. He nodded wordlessly and stooped down to lightly touch Freya’s rough, scar-marked head.

Suddenly, we were no longer in that dark, dank cave. There was no stench of sulfur, no blasting heat. The screams of the tormented had been replaced by the sound of cheerful birds, the darkness recalled by a midday sun. A warm breeze enveloped my body, filling my lungs for the first time in forever and it was all I could do to keep myself from crying.

He had brought me to a small, riverside park. There wasn’t much to it; a couple of benches and some trees overlooking a wide, rust-hued river, and a cracked, uneven sidewalk that followed the body of murky water. It wasn’t a terribly attractive park, as far as parks go, but to me, in that moment, it was the most beautiful place I had ever seen.

I glanced over at Bram, who now occupied a human vessel; an olive skinned man with black hair and a clean, navy-blue business suit. He cocked a devious brow and flashed me an artful grin.

“Now,” he began. “Let’s discuss payment.”

A sly smile crossed my own lips as I leaned into him and whispered. “Lets.”

Bram hadn’t checked me before he agreed to transport Freya and me out of Hell. Until me, he probably never had much reason to check anyone. It’s not like your ordinary, everyday demons are walking around Hell carrying demon-killing weapons.

But I was no ordinary demon, and I did have a demon killing weapon; a silver blade crafted by the ancient Kurds. I had found it buried within the walls of Hell itself, hidden it and smuggled it top-side. The bone hilt sat snugly in my grasp behind my back.

I swiftly plunged the weapon into the demon’s stomach. Bram gasped in surprise, his eyes growing wide as a hot orange light ignited within him, outlining the skeleton beneath his borrowed skin. I steadily twisted the blade and watched with a terrible satisfaction as the life flickered in his eyes and faded away. I’d never taken pleasure in killing before, and though not all of me enjoyed taking Bram’s life, there was something horribly and significantly pleasing about it.

_Oh god…_

I jerked the knife free from his body, causing him to collapse at my feet. _He’s just a demon,_ I tried to remember as I felt myself begin to vibrate with a rush of adrenaline and shame. _He was just a demon._

_I’m just a demon._

“That’s what you get for trusting a demon,” I muttered under my breath. My own words startled me, coming out in a gentle, feminine voice I did not recognize. It was then I’d realized what had happened; Bram had shoved me into a convenient, unsuspecting bystander.

I glanced down at the body Bram had stolen for me, eyeing the slender teal dress that hugged a pair of slim hips. My hands, which were dainty and manicured, patted a pair of round breasts as I stared down at the tall black high heels strapped to a set of delicate feet. Long, sandy blonde hair spilled over my shoulders as I moved, and a long pearl necklace rolled noiselessly across my chest.

“Goddamnit,” I cursed with a heavy sigh. I looked down to Freya, who cocked her head as she gave me a curious stare. “Well, we made it, didn’t we?” I said as I casually tucked my knife into the pocket of the tan jacket my host was wearing. “Come on,” I commanded Freya as I turned to walk down the sidewalk. “Let’s find me another body.”

\-----

I found him at the hospital on the fifth floor. His name was Max. Max was twenty-eight. He was tall, muscular, and his eyes were blue. He wore his blond hair short but shaggy, and kept dark, scratchy stubble across his firm jaw.

Max was suicidal; PTSD, the doctors said, from the war in Afghanistan. Max had slit his wrists and successfully torn his arteries open. He had very nearly bled to death.

I came to him in the body Bram had forced me into. The lights had been switched off, the curtains drawn shut, creating a warm, yellow light that spilled onto the white linoleum floor. He was lying flat in his bed, staring up at nothing with a bandaged arm resting heavily on his forehead.

I quietly took a seat in the chair beside his bed. My lips parted to speak, but I wasn’t sure what to say. I’d never asked permission to possess anyone before. It wasn’t something demons normally did. My kind usually took who they wanted and my every instinct told me to cram myself down his throat and claim his flesh for my own. But, demon or not, I was John Winchester. I still had enough of a conscience left; I couldn’t just take over someone like that.

Again.

“Hello, Max,” I decided on simplicity to break the ice.

“Who are you?” Max asked apathetically, side-eyeing me without moving his head. I offered a kind smile as I contemplated my response.

“This is going to sound strange,” I haltingly began, temporarily ignoring his question. “But I need a body.”

“A body?” Max echoed with disgusted curiosity. He turned his head to get a better look at me and my current vessel. “For what?”

“To possess,” I replied openly. I blinked and my eyes flashed black, showing him I was no human. Max sat up sharply, his blue eyes widening as he stared at me.

“What are you?” he whispered, as his chest began to rise and fall quickly in a borderline panic. “Are you real?”

“Very,” I responded to his second question first. “I’m a demon,” I explained. “And I need a new body. I would like to use yours, if you’ll let me.”

Max’s brows creased as his face fell into a look of bewildered confusion.

“You’re trying to decide if you’re dreaming or if you’re hallucinating,” I said, venturing a guess. “Logic tells you you’re asleep since you’re not prone to hallucinations. But it feels too real to be a dream. Too substantial.”

Max stared wide eyed, nodding hesitantly. I studied him from behind black eyes as I waited for him to come to terms with this new reality. The reality that demons were real, and there was one sitting at his bedside.

“You’re… a demon?” Max said finally. He still didn’t sound like he quite believed it. I nodded quietly as he shifted uncomfortably in his bed. “And you want to possess me?” He repeated everything I’d just told him, as if he was speaking to himself. “But you need my permission?”

“No,” I shook my head. “I don’t. But it would make me feel better if I had it.”

“Why?” Max wanted to know.

“I’m not exactly your everyday demon,” I told him, casually sitting back in my chair. “I have something most demons don’t.”

“What’s that?” he asked curiously.

“A conscience.”

Max carefully pondered my words, my request, my existence.

“Why me?” he wondered after a minute of thoughtful silence had passed.

“You’re in peak physical condition,” I explained simply. “And you don’t seem particularly interested in piloting that skeleton of yours anymore.”

A faint, rosy hue rose on Max’s cheeks as I nodded to the white bandages wrapped snugly around his wrists. He let out a heavy, guilt-laden breath as he studied his self-inflicted injuries.

“What are you going to do with me?” he asked softly.

“I haven’t decided yet,” I admitted, a tiny smile tugging at the corner of my lips. “Maybe I’ll try living for once.”

Max stared at me with a weighty reluctance, not overly sold on the idea of me taking the helm of his personal vessel.

“Look,” I began with an impatient sigh. “I’m going to be honest with you. I’m kind of a fugitive. I just broke out of Hell and I all I want to do is sit on a beach somewhere and avoid demons, which is something I am very good at. If you let me possess you, I can’t guarantee it’s all going to be beaches and beers - I might have to do things you might not like me doing - but I’ll try and make it worth your while.”

“How?” Max questioned curiously. “What can you offer me?”

“Peace.”

“Peace?” Max echoed, not entirely put off by the idea.

“I can make you sleep through most of it,” I promised.

This piqued Max’s interest, he seemed to be genuinely contemplating my offer.

“Not all of it?” he wanted to know.

“No,” I shook my head. “Probably not all of it.”

There was a long pause and then, “How long do you need my body for?” He asked more out of vague curiosity than anything. I could tell his mind had been made up, and how long I planned on occupying his body was not entirely relevant.

“Could be a couple of days. Could be a couple of centuries.” I paused as Max’s nose wrinkled at the word _centuries_. “There’s a good chance you won’t survive once I’m gone.”

Max mulled this information over. On the one hand, I was offering him a reprieve from the torment he lived with. On the other, I was asking him to sacrifice whatever life he had left to me, and it could be hundreds of years before he finally dropped dead. A century is a long time when you just want it all to be over now.

“You know what?” Max spoke up at last. “Fuck it. Why not? You can use my corpse. You’re right, I don’t really want it anymore, anyway.”

A wolfish smile crossed my lips before I realized what I was doing. I attempted to hide it by replacing my grin with a kind smile, but quickly gave it up as a fruitless endeavor. I had a new body to get to, after all.

I’d never jumped into a person before. Not consciously, not on my own accord. But I found the task simple enough, the logistics hardwired into my demonized mind, and I leapt from the woman’s mouth and down Max’s throat. It took less than a minute for me to fully transition myself from one vessel to the other, and when I did I found myself on my back. The force I’d used to drive myself into Max had knocked him — us — back on the hospital bed. I stared up at the solid white ceiling with my black eyes and took in a deep, satisfying breath.

“I need a cigarette.”


	3. Same Damn Life

Living. It was a romantic notion, anyway.

I really did try. For a while, actually. I traveled for fun, not necessity. I visited a dozen national parks and a national lakeshore. I saw the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans in the same day. Twice. I flew to Europe and sailed down to Africa and from there I traveled so far east I eventually ended up back in the west.

And for a while it was good. Exploring places I’d never thought about visiting. Standing on historic grounds I’d forgotten existed. Vacationing. I consumed the sights and sounds, inhaled them as quickly as I could, just trying to get on to the next world wonder, the next beach, the next whatever.

I never was very good at relaxing.

I realized after a year on the road and on planes and ships and trains that I wasn’t traveling for the experience. I wasn’t navigating the planet for fun or to live, as I said I’d do. I was trying to distract myself. If I were to stop, I would think, I would reflect. And by that point in my long, long existence, I had endured enough to know that introspection was hell.

At least it was my Hell.

In Hell I had eluded the demons for over a millennia, but it hadn’t all been running through narrow caves and slipping through shadows. There was a lot of time to sit. A lot of time to think. A lot of time to reflect.

When I first got to Hell — the second time around, that is — I didn’t think I belonged there. I didn’t deserve to be there. It wasn’t that I regretted selling my soul, not for what I’d gotten out of the deal. But I couldn’t accept that Hell was it for me. I’d worked so damn hard, hurt so damn much for so damn long, the pit couldn’t be where it all ended for me.

Except, after a while, I realized Hell was always where it was always going to end. People — good people — were dead because of me. I had taught my sons to be soldiers, sacrificed their happiness to my own crusade. I had expected them to bend to my ridiculous standards, but I never really raised them. I was gone too often to have done anything that resembled actual parenting. I never hit them, not once, but Jesus, I was a distant son of a bitch. I wasn’t there for them, even when I was around.

And then there was Mary. Everything I’d done since her death, I’d done for her. Because of her. I swore my revenge and couldn’t - wouldn’t — see anything but that. Everything else was just a means to an end, including my children. What kind of heartless bastard does that?

I couldn’t even remember why I was so intent on avenging my wife. I remembered loving her, deeply and completely. But the reality of those feelings had long since dispersed and I no longer recalled what it was about her, about the mother of my children, that had driven me to feel so profoundly.

These thoughts fueled me to run. They trailed closely behind me wherever I went, and they continued to torment me on earth. I tried like hell to outrun them, but they drove me to pick up a blade and a gun and return to the same damn life I’d left behind so long ago.

Only, hunting no longer consumed me the way it used to. It no longer provided the powerful distraction I had been looking for. Because hunting as a demon was easy. Too easy. I could feel a monster’s presence, could taste it in the air. I could see their true form beneath their mortal masks. I knew what I was hunting the moment I rolled into town, and, so long as there were no other demons around, it would be dead within a day.

Still, I pressed on. It was something to do, something that satisfied my demon-inspired lust for violence without letting it drag me down deeper into the abyss of malevolence. Something to keep me busy as I served out the rest of my sentence of solitude on earth.

At least I tried to serve my time. Fate has an annoying habit of altering one’s plans.

 

I was working a Vetala case on the outskirts of Tallahassee the night we met. I suppose it was inevitable, us meeting. A hunter can only keep to himself for so long before he starts running into other hunters, and they were not the first I had encountered. Weeks before I’d had a run-in with a newbie hunter named Cole, a man who found my existence perplexing. He attempted an exorcism, and I broke his nose.

But I digress.

I followed the pair of Vetala to a seedy motel, the kind of motel I used to stay in, back when I still needed things like sleep. The “women” — a thin brunette and a tall redhead, both dressed in short skirts and fishnet stockings — slipped into room seven, and quietly closed the door behind them. I watched them from my seat behind the wheel of a black ’52 Ford pickup, and carefully checked the parking lot for witnesses. Satisfied I would be able to slip in and out without being seen, I popped the door open.

“Stay here, Freya,” I instructed my canine companion. “Window’s rolled down if I need you. Don’t go jumping through anymore glass, you hear?”

Freya gave me an exaggerated look of guilt as she gradually laid on the leather bench seat. I rolled my eyes at her dramatic reaction but couldn’t help the tiny grin that tugged at my mouth as I stepped out of the car and into the muggy night.

I moved with a swift silence across the parking lot, my right hand clutching the hilt of a silver dagger I kept hidden in the pocket of my black leather jacket. The door to room seven was locked, and no light crept out from inside. They were waiting for someone.

I threw my elbow into the wooden door, and the latch cleanly snapped in half upon impact. The door creaked open and I let myself in, brandishing my weapon as I looked about the dingy room. A couple of twin beds sat on the left wall, neatly made with duffle bags sitting on top, and a cheap wooden desk sat on the right side of the silent room. At a glance, the dark room appeared vacant, but I knew better. Even if I hadn’t watched them enter the dingy room, the bitter scent of venom that clung to the thick humidity would have given them away.

I sniffed once, twice, to isolate their hiding spots, and I easily located the brunette. She was holding her breath in the shadows to my left, crouched in the cramped space between the window and the first bed. I nudged the door closed with my foot, and grinned thinly as her golden eyes met mine. She haltingly rose, hissing threateningly as she flashed her sharp fangs.

“Come on, you ugly bitch,” I taunted as I turned to face her, holding my dagger out for her to see. “Try me.”

The Vetala stared warily at the silver blade and took a cautious step back. A sly grin formed across her red lips, a tell that her sister was nearby. Not that I needed the hint; I could smell the sharp traces of the monster’s poison as she noiselessly approached me on my right. Without looking away from the brunette, I casually put my hand up and sent the redhead sailing across the room. A thick gasp forced its way from her lungs as she slammed forcefully into the wall, and a sharp wail escaped her throat when she found she couldn’t move.

“Wait your turn, sweetheart,” I said lightly without turning my head. “Well?” I spoke directly to the terrified brunette. “I’m waiting.”

The creature eyed me with apprehension. She knew what I was, and it changed everything. A desperate rage ignited behind her eyes as she flashed me her fangs and bravely stepped forward. She came at me hard with her fists swinging, hoping to get in at least one solid blow before the inevitable happened. I moved my head to the right to avoid her fist, and easily deflected her left fist with my arm. She had left herself wide open, unintentionally leaving her chest completely unprotected in her frenzied attempt to strike me. Without hesitation, I seized the opportunity and skillfully drove my dagger into her heart. A heavy breath escaped her lips, and I slid the blade a little deeper.

“Commendable effort,” I said, almost sincere as her body slipped to the floor and began to deteriorate.

I turned and instantly set my sights on the redhead. I held up the dagger for her to see, showing her the sticky red mess that glistened across the blade, and took pride in the horror that flickered across her face as she stared at her sister’s blood. I released my hold on her and she staggered, grasping at the wall for balance. “What about you?” I inquired. “Are you going to go out swinging, too?”

The redhead eyed me skittishly as I made slow steps toward her, and she cowered as I drew near.

“That’s really disappointing,” I commented. I paused when I reached the center of the room and arranged an expression of exaggerated and entirely false sorrow on my face. “And sad. Are you crying? How am I supposed to enjoy this if you’re crying? You know what?” I stepped aside, clearing a path between me and the door. “Just get out of here. I’m not even in the mood anymore.”

The Vetala sniffled, her wet eyes blinking at me with hopeful uncertainty.

“Go on.” I motioned towards the door with my left hand. “Get out of here.”

She didn’t think twice about my offer. She steadied herself and made a break for the door. I snatched her mid-run and brought her into me so swiftly she didn’t have time to struggle. I gradually pushed the bloodied blade into her chest, inching the sharp silver towards her heart, and I watched as her expression filled with shock and betrayal.

“I know,” I nodded as she gaped up at me. “I’m surprised, too. I didn’t think you would fall for that.”

Old John — human John — wouldn’t have been so cruel. The old me never would have taken his time or carelessly tried tricking creatures. The hunter I used to be never took pleasure in killing. But I wasn’t John anymore, not really. I was a lot like him, but, at the same time, I was nothing at all like him. I was a demon. And there was something entirely satisfying about carnage. Something terribly enjoyable about watching the light fade, hearing the breath halt and knowing I had taken those things.

Fucking demons.

I removed the knife from her heart with a quick hand and released her from my grip. She tumbled lifelessly to the dirty carpet below, and carelessly left her body where it lay. I turned and pocketed my weapon, and casually made a stride towards the exit. I didn’t get far; an invisible force suddenly confined me, preventing me from advancing any further. I looked up. Painted overhead in white, one shade lighter than the ceiling itself, was a sizable demon trap painted in the center of the room.

“Really?” I sighed in annoyance. 

It was then that I realized where I was. This wasn’t just any motel room. I was in a hunter’s room. Two, judging by the bags that sat on each bed. Just as this new turn of events sank in, the door opened.

I squinted at the light that flooded the room, and the tall figures that stood silhouetted in the doorway.  
“See, Sammy?” One of them said in a rough voice. “Told you it’d work.”


	4. Family Reunion

"I didn't say it _wouldn't_ work," the taller of the two figures argued as they sauntered into the room. "I said that we shouldn't try it."

My heart skipped as the door swung closed. The lights flickered on and, for the first time in over a thousand years, I laid eyes on my sons. An inaudible gasp escaped my chest as my mind exploded with excitement laced with shame, and it took everything within me not to let these emotions, or any emotions, show through. I swallowed hard past a lump in my throat as my boys eyed the ashen remains of the Vetalas.

 _Keep it together_ , I commanded myself. _You're a demon for fuck sake. Act like it._

"You must be Maddox," Dean said without fear, his green eyes sweeping over me.

"You must know Cole," I commented dryly, successfully keeping my voice from cracking. My eyes flickered up at the trap on the ceiling. "You knew I'd be here." I glanced back to Dean. "How?"

"We followed the sulfur brick road," he replied with a cold smile. "You weren't that hard to track."

"You set me up?" I wondered out loud with mild amusement.

"Kind of," Sam reluctantly admitted. "The Vitals were obviously real."

"We figured you'd be looking for them," Dean added. "So we let it slip there was a hunter in town and where they could find him."

"Clever," I acknowledged with a nod of approval before I gave them a suspicious look. "Can I ask why you two went through all the trouble to trap me?"

"We just wanna talk," Dean said calmly, putting his hands up to show me he was, for the time being, unarmed.

"Fine. Talk."

"Why are you hunting?" Sam asked with genuine curiosity. A short laugh escaped my throat.

"You set this whole thing up to ask me _that_?" I laughed, amused but annoyed. I glanced between Sam and Dean, studying their hardened expressions. "No," I realized, answering my own question. "You wouldn't have bothered if you were just curious about my motives." I narrowed my eyes accusingly. "You plan on killing me."

The gravity of the situation I had unwittingly walked into struck me like a violent gale blasting across a stormy sea. It was strange enough, standing six feet in front of my own sons without them recognizing me, without them having any inkling of who they were talking to. But my sons hunting me? Threatening to kill me? That was a concept too outlandish for me to properly process. For a moment, it struck me as humorous, until I recalled just how much the demons had come to fear the infamous Winchesters. And then I wondered if they had gotten good enough to stand a chance against their old man.

"That depends," Dean said, and loosely folded his arms across his chest.

"On what?"

"Why you're hunting," Sam said, then added, "What is Crowley up to?"

"Fuck if I know," I replied shortly with a shrug. "I don't work for that asshole."

Sam shot a quizzical expression at Dean, who looked just as skeptical.

"How do you not work for Crowley?" Sam asked.

I hesitated. They already knew more about me — demon me — than I felt comfortable with. But I knew I needed to cooperate, at least a little, if I wanted to walk out of there without a fight. And I did.

"Crowley doesn't know I'm topside," I grudgingly supplied them with a half truth.

"You broke out of Hell?" Dean asked, looking somewhat impressed by the suggestion. "To hunt?"

"Well, no," I admitted. "I broke out because Hell is… well. You know. You've both been there."

"So why hunt?" Sam desperately wanted to know. I shrugged.

"I got bored," I lied. "Can't a demon hunt monsters without being questioned?"

"No," Dean replied, his eyes narrowing slightly at me. "He can't."

I sighed in frustration and eyed my sons, keeping the twinges of pain I felt from surfacing. While part of me was glad they couldn't recognize their dear old dad, our reunion was a little crushing. But then, I guess I don't know what I was expecting. I was a demon after all, and they were hunters. Hunters I had trained to hate demons more than anything else on the planet. They were just doing their job. Old me, John, would have been proud. New me, demon me – "Maddox" – was annoyed.

"Are we gonna do this, then?" I asked impatiently, casually shifting my weight as I looked between my boys.

"Do what?" Sam replied with a look of confusion, cocking his head slightly to the side.

"What you trapped me to do," I said, rolling my eyes. "Or, what you're going to try to do."

"You don't think we can kill you?" Dean questioned in a challenging manner, and raised a brow.

"I don't think you realize who you're dealing with," I replied with unwavering confidence. "I don't even know why you're so intent on getting rid of me. I'm not making deals of killing people."

"Not yet," Sam said. I gave him a cold look.

"I don't kill people," I swore through gritted teeth, flexing my fingers into hardened fists.

"Yeah?" Dean challenged skeptically. "What about your meat suit?"

" _Meat suit_?" I echoed, appalled by the term. "He's a human being for Christ's sake, not a goddamn puppet."

Sam and Dean exchanged a mystified expression, finding my reaction unusual.

"Did he just...?" Dean began to question.

"I think he did," Sam nodded, eyeing me suspiciously.

"My _vessel_ is fine," I informed them. "For the record, I asked his permission to possess him. You kill me, you kill him." I paused. "His name is Max, by the way."

An uncomfortable look flitted across Dean's face. He shot Sam a questioning glance, who shrugged in return. Neither of them seemed to know what to do with me, or if they even believed me.

They turned around and huddled close together, dropping their voices in a half-assed effort to make their conversation private.

"Do you trust him?" Sam whispered.

"Fuck no," Dean shook his head. "Never trust a demon."

"I know," Sam agreed. "But what if he's not lying about his… vessel, or whatever? I mean, he's obviously some kind of hunter."

"True," Dean acknowledged. "But that's today. Who knows what he'll be hunting tomorrow?"

"Ghosts," I spoke up. Sam and Dean slowly turned to face me again, not entirely pleased I had interrupted their less-than-private conversation. "Probably," I added with a nonchalant shrug. "Or vamps. There sure are a hell of a lot vamps these days."

My boys frowned at my casual banter, clearly unamused.

"Look," I began with a calm voice. "I know you don't trust me. I don't blame you. I'm a demon. I get it. We're not a type to be trusted. But this whole macho demon-hating showdown. Can we just get it over with?"

"You seem pretty confident that you'd win," Sam observed. He stood straighter, and puffed his chest out to make himself appear more intimidating. "You do know this is kind of what we do, right? Professionally?"

"Oh, I know who you are," I said with a thin smile. "But I highly doubt you've ever gone up against a demon like me."

The brothers each raised a curious brow. They had dealt with cocky demons before, low-level demons who foolishly thought they could be the ones to do what Lilith and Alistair and Crowley could not. But they could tell I wasn't being brash. They could hear the truth in my voice. I was nothing like the others.

Not that I wanted to fight my boys, of course. That was the last thing I wanted to do. But I couldn't see them just letting me go. They didn't go through all the trouble of setting me up to just let me walk out of there.

The door silently creaked open behind Sam and Dean. When nothing entered, the brothers shrugged it off, presuming a gentle breeze had brushed open the door with the broken latch. Only there wasn't nothing, and it hadn't been a breeze; Freya had quietly slipped into the room. Her stance was rigid, ready, as she moved with her body low to the ground, stalking Sam and Dean. She bore her teeth and positioned herself to pounce.

"No!" I barked a harsh command, staring Freya in the eye as she abruptly sat with a heavy shame. Sam and Dean looked between each other before giving me a look of confusion.

"Hellhound," I casually explained, motioning to my companion that sat just behind them.

"Hellhound?" Dean echoed with a gulp. He swiveled around with discomfort, his eyes searching the room for signs of the beast. "Why is there a Hellhound here?"

"She's mine," I lightly explained. "She thinks you're holding me captive."

"Aren't we?" Dean inquired. A grin found its way across my lips.

From my inner jacket pocket I withdrew a silver plated pistol. I held it up for them to see, carefully keeping the barrel aimed away from them. Before they could react, I aimed at the outer circle of the trap painted on the ceiling and rapidly discharged three bullets, all shot in a straight line that effectively broke the seal. My boys exchanged an uncomfortable look, visibly unsettled by the extreme lack of effort it took for me to break free of their carefully planned trap.

"No." I coldly informed them as I shoved my gun back into my pocket.

I shouldered Dean out of the way as I casually strolled past him and Sam.

"Come, Freya," I whistled as I walked through the open door and into the motel parking lot. My companion happily obeyed, frolicking playfully at my feet as I headed towards my truck.

"Why didn't you just break out when we found you?" Sam's voice called from behind me, his curiosity temporarily greater than his desire to stab me.

"You two would have killed me," I explained with my back still turned as I approached the old black Ford. I opened the passenger side door and patted the leather seat, wordlessly inviting Freya to jump inside. She accepted the offer with vigor and allowed me to scratch her behind her ears. "You'd try, anyway," I added with an air of confidence. "That's no way to build trust."

"And why do you want us to trust you?" Sam couldn't figure out my angle.

I turned to face the hunters, who stared at me with an uncertain interest. From my jacket pocket I extracted a hard pack of cigarettes, and withdrew one. I lit it with a silver zippo as I pondered my response. Of course I wanted them to trust me. I was, after all, their father, and what father wouldn't want his children to trust him? But I couldn't tell them this, not when I was trying to keep my identity concealed, and I instead considered what a demon – a more demony demon – might say.  
"Honestly," I finally said with a breath of smoke. "I don't give a damn whether you two trust me or not. I just want you to leave me alone and let me hunt in peace."

It wasn't true, not wholly anyway. I didn't really want them to leave me alone. But I didn't deserve to be there with them, either.  
"What's with that, anyway?" Dean asked, unsatisfied with the response I had first supplied them with. "Demons don't generally go around hunting monsters."

"Old habits die hard."

"You were a hunter?" Sam asked with a sincere interest. I looked between them decided not to confirm or deny this. I didn't want to tip them off anymore as to who I was, so I quietly drew on my cigarette instead.

"Don't hunters usually end up in Heaven?" Dean tested, to which I responded with a disapproving grimace. "Right." Dean picked up the hint.

"Anyway," I began with an exhale of thick smoke that encircled my head in the calm humidity. "It was nice meeting the infamous Winchesters, but I think I'm going to get going before one of you tries to stab me in the face."

"Hold on a minute, Maddox," Dean called as I turned around to close the truck door. "You're not going anywhere."

"I'm not?" I challenged, spinning around to cock a brow at him.

"No way," Dean shook his head, smugly folding his arms across his chest. "If we let you go, you owe us one."

"Fine," I hastily agreed as I rolled my eyes.

"But us not saying anything to Crowley's gonna cost you another one."

My eyes narrowed at Dean who looked quite pleased with himself. Sammy glanced between his brother and me with a worried expression, uncertain how I would react and whether or not it was a good idea to ask for favors from a demon.

"You're blackmailing me?"

"Not blackmail," Dean insisted. "Let's call it quid pro quo. We keep your secret, you do something for us."

"That does kind of sound like blackmail," Sam muttered, earning him an eye roll from his brother..

"As the demon you're blackmailing, I'm seriously pissed off right now," I said. My glare slowly faded as I stared at my oldest son, whose expression was unwaveringly cold. "But as a hunter I'm a little proud. What do you need me to do?"

Sammy looked to his big brother, apparently equally as interested as I was in what Dean wanted from me. A sly smile formed across Dean's lips and a devious spark twinkled in his eye.

"We need you to break into Crowley's compound."

"I'm sorry. For a minute there it sounded like you said you want me to break into Crowley's compound."

Dean's grin remained steadfast, as if he knew exactly what I was going to do. Sam pondered Dean's proposal with interest and smiled when he concluded that his brother's plan was solid.

"That could work," he agreed.

"What?!" I barked around the cigarette that hung loosely between my lips. "No. No way. I don't give a damn what that son of a bitch has, I am not going in there."

"I guess I'll just give Crowley a call then," Dean smoothly responded. He dig his phone from his pocket and held it up in front of him in an exaggerated effort to peer at the smooth screen. "Look at that." Dean paused to turn his phone around to show me Crowley's name across the bright screen with the number "666" beneath it. "He's even on speed dial."

I shifted uncomfortably as I narrowed my eyes at him. It was surreal, the way Dean spoke to me. He had always been the eager and obedient son, the one who wouldn't dream of talking back to me, let alone blackmailing me. Yet here he was, treating me like I was just some… demon.

"Dude," Sam said with his nose wrinkled. "Why do you have Crowley on speed dial?"

"We… talk a lot," Dean struggled to produce an excuse. "For work stuff. Shut up." He returned his focus on me. "Should I hit call?"

I breathed out angrily through my nose and folded my arms across my chest. I was cornered, and I had two options; risk outing myself to Crowley, or let Dean tell the king I was free. Either way, I was screwed.

"Wait," I spoke grudgingly with a heavy sigh before Dean could hit the call button. I growled in a low, demonic huff, and narrowed my eyes as they waited expectantly for me to say something more. "You two are assholes."

"I'll take that as a yes," Dean said with a triumphant grin, and he placed his phone back into his pocket.

"What do you need me to do?" I asked as unenthusiastically as possible.

"Crowley has a grimoire," Dean explained. "We need him to not have it."

I waited for him to elaborate, but nothing more was said.

"That's all I get?" I asked, feeling a strange hint of disappointment.

"That's all you get," Dean confirmed.

"Me not beating the crap out of you for trapping me." I motioned to the motel room across the parking lot. "That doesn't buy me a little trust?"

Not that I would have. But they didn't know that.

"It wasn't for nothing," he assured me. "We won't make you ride in the trunk."

"Wait," Sam interjected. "He's riding with us?"

"Yeah," I said. "What?"

"Yeah," Dean said with a shrug. "To make sure he actually does this thing and gets it to us," he explained. "I don't want to make this grimoire…" He trailed off temporarily, waving a hand as he searched for the right word. "Stuff a… thing."

"A thing?" Sam echoed.

"Yeah, you know." Dean nodded. "The thing that consumes a better part of a year. I'm done with that. I just want to go back to hunting ghosts and wendigos and shit."

"Fair enough," Sam agreed. "Just hunting monsters would feel kind of like a vacation."

"Then it's settled," Dean said with a tiny, half sincere smile. "Road trip to Uncle Crowley's summer house of evil."

"Don't call him that," Sam shook his head disapprovingly. Dean gave Sam a "come on" look, but quickly realized what he had said was a little creepy.

"Right," he admitted with an awkward cough. "Shall we?"

"Now?" I asked.

"Now."


	5. Chapter 5

Riding in the backseat of the Impala was strange. Watching Dean behind the wheel and Sammy in the passenger’s seat was downright bizarre. It had always been me driving the boys. My boys. When they were so much younger and hadn’t seen so much horror.

For a while, I just watched them. I listened to the tiny conversations that would occasionally break an otherwise thick and uncomfortable silence. They weren’t doing anything in particular, nor were they really saying much of anything, but I couldn’t remember the last time I had just watched my children. I couldn’t recall the last time I had listened to them and their brotherly banter.

And then it occurred to me that I never had.

A heavy, uncomfortable ache began to settle in my chest. I shifted in discomfort, and cleared my throat. Had I been out on the road by myself, this is the point where I would have pulled over and scoured every newspaper and webpage for any kind of hint of monster activity. I would have immersed myself in the distractions of hunting, using the job as the boot that would stomp down the pile of feelings that kept accumulating until I realized there was no feasible way to actually kill the guilt, and if there were, it would only make me more of a demon than I already was.

It was amazing, really. Despite the centuries and decades, I was still at war. Only now the war was raging not in the hot jungles and rice paddies of Vietnam, but inside of me.

“Where the hell is this place, anyway?” I abruptly shattered the heavy quietude that blanketed the Impala’s interior. “It’s not Hell, is it?”

“Baton Rouge,” Dean reported shortly, his eyes drooping as he tried to focus on the road.

“I could drive,” I offered automatically, forgetting how odd that might seem. “If you need to catch some z’s.”

“No way,” Dean shook his head as his brows furrowed at the prospect. “I barely let Sam drive her. I sure as shit am not letting some demon drive my baby.”

“Fair enough,” I said quickly. “But are these really necessary?”

I held up my hands to display the set of cuffs that had been clasped around my wrist. A devil’s trap had been expertly carved into the silver plating, rendering me unable to use my demonic powers. Of course, I could, in all likelihood, break out of them. If Hell couldn’t hold me, a set of fancy handcuffs sure as shit wouldn’t. My boy’s ability to break into and out of anything and anywhere didn’t come from nowhere. But I stayed in them for the same reason I let Sam and Dean think they had successfully trapped me at the motel; I had to prove to them that I meant them no harm.

“Considering you’re a demon,” Sam began as he turned to look at me. “And we met, like, three hours ago, be glad it’s just the handcuffs.”

“Right,” I said with a sigh as I sat back in my seat.

A thin line of pink light had begun to poke its head above the horizon, stretching its light across the sky to chase away the night. Flat fields and wetlands raced by in a silhouetted blur and already I could feel the fever in the humid southern air. It was going to be a hot day, and I grinned; ever since Hell, earth felt cold, and there was something oddly comforting about hot days

A familiar guitar riff echoed loudly from the speakers, prompting a fond smile until I realized exactly what song it was.

_"Livin' easy  
Lovin' free  
Season ticket on a one way ride…"_

“Why did it have to be this song?” I muttered under my breath.

“What?” Dean called from the front seat, his eyes glancing at my reflection in the rearview mirror.

“Would you mind changing the song?” I requested.

“Not an AC/DC fan?” Dean asked without sympathy, and I knew he had no intentions of finding a new tune.

“I am,” I informed him. “This song just kind of lost its luster after… well, Hell.”

“Right,” Dean nodded, but didn’t change the radio station. At least, not right away. He kept his eyes on the road as the sky gradually began to lighten and, just when it seemed like he was going to ignore my request, he sighed and rolled the dial to another classic rock station. Sam cocked a suspicious brow at Dean who frowned, looking somewhat displeased by his own action.

“What?” Dean spoke defensively. “He’s got a point.”

“Yeah,” Sam slowly agreed, turning his head to view the land that rolled on along the highway, now visibly green in the ever-growing daylight.

The awkward silence returned and danced between an old Eric Clapton song, _Cocaine_ , and the healthy roar of the Chevy’s engine. I stared out the windows of the car that was once mine, and absently pet Freya who laid across the backseat with her head in my lap. And then, quite suddenly, Sam became aware of what I was doing.

“Are you…” he began with an anxious intake of breath, snapping his head around to look at me. “Did you bring your hellhound?”

“Her name is Freya,” I replied.

Dean jerked the Impala to the side of the road and slammed on the breaks. We involuntarily shot forward in our seats as the car came to a lurching stop, and fell back once it had settled in the dirt beside the highway. My eldest son turned to shoot me a furious look, attempting to cover the extreme discomfort he felt at having a loose hellhound in his car.

“No,” he shook his head angrily. “No fuckin’ way. Get that damn thing outta my car.”

“No,” I said calmly.

“Uh, yes,” Dean fumed.

“No.”

My boys exchanged a worried but infuriated glance.

“I’m sorry,” I said with thick sarcasm. “Would you have preferred it if I left a hellhound at the motel parking lot?”

“Yeah,” Dean replied. “Now get it out of here.”

“No.”

It was probably cheating, me attempting to carry out my eternal sentence of solitude with a dog in tow. But we had been through Hell together in a fairly literal sense. I couldn’t leave her down there, and I wasn’t going to leave her on her own. Especially not in some parking lot in Florida.

“Get it out of here now,” Dean repeated with a growl. “Or I swear to God I’ll—“

“You’ll what?” I cut him off, annoyed. “You’ll call Crowley? Think real hard about how badly you want that grimoire, because you call that bastard and I’m out.”

Dean’s jaw clenched as his eyes narrowed at me. Sam glanced between the two of us, waiting for one of us to make a move. With a heavy huff, Dean turned around to face the road and shifted, defeated.

“Can you at least put her in the trunk?” he hotly requested.

“Nope.”

His fingers anxiously tapped the steering wheel as he sat, fuming, seeming to weigh his options.

“Fine,” he grudgingly agreed. “But if it tries anything, so help me god I’ll—“

“Stab me in the head with that angel blade you’ve got tucked in your jacket pocket?” I finished for him.

Truth be told, I wasn’t certain Dean was armed with his celestial weapon. While we’re on the subject of honesty, I couldn’t even be certain Dean actually had such a weapon. All I had to go on were rumors and the folklore I had heard down in the pit. My snide comment hadn’t just been for the sake of being snarky; I was offhandedly looking for conformation both my sons were armed with blades that could effectively kill me. For good kill me. Just in case.

“Something like that,” Dean verified he was packing some supernatural heat as he put the car in drive and set the car back on the road.

“If she tries anything, I will kill her myself,” I assured them, confident it wouldn’t come to that.

“You would?” Sam questioned skeptically, studying the level of sincerity on my face. “Why?”

I responded with a tiny smile and said;

“How far to Baton Rouge?”

\- - - - -

We reached Baton Rouge by midmorning. Dean drove around the city limits, following the outskirts around the capital to the west. From there he continued on for another five miles to an abandoned mental institution that sat back from the road, tucked away behind tall, overgrown hedges and old trees draped with hanging French moss. Thick vines of ivy climbed up the stone structure, threatening to swallow the crumbling building completely. The surfaces not consumed by ivy were coated in barely legible graffiti, spray painted in a wide assortment of colors that clashed awkwardly against layers of older graffiti and the green tendrils that threatened to devour it, too. The narrow, barred windows, most of which were missing windowpanes, had long since been boarded up from the inside, the doors bolted shut from the outside. The uneven brick steps leading up to the wide, metallic doors had been strewn with a thick layer of dead leaves, cigarette butts and beer cans. It didn’t look like anyone had been there in years.

“Are you sure this is the right place?” Sam asked as he studied the eerie asylum.

“That’s what the last demon said,” Dean replied as he put the Impala in park several feet away from the building. We climbed out into the muggy morning air, our eyes gazing up suspiciously at the haunting structure. There was no hint of a spell or misdirection. It wasn’t pretending to be abandoned; it was just abandoned.

“A little quiet out here, boys.” I observed.

“Yeah,” Sam, to my astonishment, agreed with me. “It is.”

“That’s what they want us to think,” Dean explained the obvious, at which I shook my head.

“It’s not _too_ quiet,” I explained. “It’s just quiet. As in, nobody’s home.”

“You just don’t want to go in there.” Dean said lightly as he opened the trunk. I took a couple of steps back to peer inside the old arsenal. A discrete smile tugged at my lips as Dean grabbed a couple of sawed-off shotguns and a box of salt rounds.

“You know I don’t,” I replied, watching him load one of the weapons with practiced ease. “I will. I just don’t think we’ll find anything.”

Dean shot me a mild scowl before tossing the loaded shotgun to Sam who caught it easily.

I leaned against the side of the Impala and began discreetly fidgeting with the handcuff locks. I paused in my task before the first cuff could spring free, and I pondered what I was doing. I contemplated why I had been handcuffed in the first place, and gradually understood it hadn’t been to prevent me from utilizing my demonic capabilities. Not entirely. I had been bound to make Sam and Dean feel safe, and breaking free wasn't going to impress them. It would make them uncomfortable, as I had when I broke their trap back in the motel, and if I made them anymore uncomfortable I could kiss any potential trust goodbye.

I sighed heavily and caught Sam’s eye.

“Do you mind?” I requested with an irritated grumble. I held my hands up and jangled the chains that connected the silver cuffs. Sam appeared reluctant, but eventually removed the tiny skeletal-looking key and cautiously freed me.

“I need my gun,” I said.

“I doubt it,” Sam replied as he carefully stuffed the handcuffs into his jacket pocket.

“I want it.” I returned flatly. Sam studied me for a minute before cracking a thin, sarcastic smile.

“Yeah,” he said with a huff. “Right.”

The way my sons were treating me was jarring. Understandable, but jolting none the less. Sure, Sam used to challenge me, but he never would have dared to ignore me or the orders I gave him. And now he was scoffing and treating me like I was some…

_Damnit._

“Come on, Freya,” I commanded with an aggravated grunt, prompting the hound to leap excitedly from the car. The boys pretended that her presence didn’t bother them, but they remained visibly unnerved. “You two can stay out here.” I said shortly. “I think I can wander through an abandoned building by myself.”

“And if it’s not as abandoned as it looks?” Dean asked. I reached into my jacket and withdrew my demon-killing knife.

“I think Freya and I can cover it,” I casually stated. “But feel free to join us if you must.”

“Is that…?” Sam trailed off in awe. He felt around in his own pocket before pulling out a similar weapon, a Kurdish-made blade with serrated edges and symbols cleanly etched across its surface. “Where did you get that?”

I grinned.

“If this place is occupied,” I said instead, choosing to ignore Sam’s question. “And this grimoire is inside, I’m going to need to know what it looks like.”

Sam grimaced as he eyed me and the weapon I had kept hidden on my person. It was difficult to tell what bothered him more; the fact I had never actually been fully disarmed, or the fact I had a demon killing knife similar to the one he and his brother carried. As if it were somehow wrong for a demon to possess such a weapon.

Dean dug a folded piece of white paper from his back pocket which he passed to me. I opened it to find a photograph of a weathered, leather-bound book with black, ancient symbols burned onto the cover. The symbols were unrecognizable to me, predating any of the archaic languages and spells I knew.

“It certainly looks like a grimoire,” I commented with a shrug. “You’re sure it’s not just a really old cook book?”

Dean rolled his eyes and closed the trunk. The three of us, plus Freya, wordlessly filed up the steps, dead leaves crunching beneath our heavy boots as we carefully stepped through the overgrowth and foliage. The sun-bleached wooden doors were bolted securely, but couldn’t withstand the force I laid into them with my foot. The locks snapped and the doors flew open with a loud crash that echoed throughout the vacant building. I took the lead inside, cautiously entering the dark asylum and glancing about the empty halls painted heavily with layers upon layers of unsightly graffiti. The air was thick and musty, disturbed dust swirled in clouds away from the door, and frightened birds fluttered in the distance. A cloying, rotten smell poured from the chipped walls; something had, more recently than not, died inside them.

“Hey, look at that,” I said with a heavy sarcasm as I turned to face Sam and Dean. “No one’s home. That’s too bad. Better luck next time.”

I attempted to push past my sons, who blocked my escape by standing close together with their arms firmly folded across their chests. As easy as it would have been to knock them down and liberate myself from the hot empty place, I grudgingly let Dean give me a non-threatening shove instead. They were the last people I wanted to hurt, and I knew they weren’t going to let me off the hook. Not until the grimoire had been recovered.

“Not so fast,” Dean said. “You’re not getting out of this that easy.”

“Yeah,” Sam agreed. “We haven’t even looked around yet.”

“Right,” I muttered with a sigh. I glanced down at Freya, who gave me an expectant look. “Go on, girl.”

The hound bolted down the corridor with her nose to the ground, sniffing for traces of trespassers. I lit a cigarette and watched as she disappeared around a corner.

“What was that?” Sam asked.

“If anyone is in here, Freya will find them,” I said with a nonchalant shrug. I paused thoughtfully, taking a long drag from my cigarette. “You boys might want to draw up a trap,” I suggested with a breath of smoke. “Just in case she does find something.”

Dean wordlessly turned and headed down the stairs to the Impala to retrieve some paint, leaving Sam and I to stand, wreathed in grey smoke.

“Do you have to smoke that here?” Sam asked, waving his hand in front of his face. I responded by taking another long drag and slowly exhaling a thick cloud of smoke.

I wanted to blame my asshole-like behavior on my demonism. But that wasn’t quite it. I was trying to distance myself from him, from both of them. I didn’t want them to get too close. I didn’t want them to find out who I was.

“What does Max think about you smoking?” Sam was curious to know.

“Max doesn’t mind,” I assured him shortly.

I glanced down the barren halls for signs of Freya, and Sam took a step back to avoid the smoke.

“You used to be a hunter, huh?” He attempted conversation in the absence of his brother.

“Last time I checked, I still am,” I replied.

“Fair enough.” Sam paused, contemplating his next question. “How’d you end up in the pit?”

I hesitated. I drew in another lung full of nicotine and carefully pondered my response.

“Had to go somewhere, didn’t I?”

“Vague,” Sam said, but didn’t bother to press me for information. “You don’t trust me, do you?”

“The hunter side of me does,” I replied. “The demon side? Not so much. You are kind of blackmailing me here.”

Sam chuckled.

“Understandable,” he said.

Dean rejoined us with a can of white spray paint. He vigorously shook the can as he eyed the concrete floors littered with leaves and paint chips, empty beer cans and plastic sandwich baggies. He stepped past me and began sweeping the debris with his foot when we heard it; a ferocious snarl and a terrible scream. Dean stood straight, alert, hand on his gun as Sam reached for his demon blade. I casually flicked my cigarette butt to the ground and fixed my eyes on the corridor.

Freya rounded the corner, inching backwards with her body stooped, and a human leg tightly clenched between her teeth. The leg belonged to the screaming demon she dragged down the hall. The demon — who possessed a twenty-something year old male with fiery red hair and pale skin — shouted in terror and agony as he was ferociously pulled towards us.

“You still got those cuffs on you?” I questioned. Sam felt around in his left pocket and pulled out the silver plated cuffs. I nodded in satisfaction and watched Freya and her prey approach. She stopped at my side, but kept her jaws clenched around the demon’s leg as Sam swiftly locked the handcuffs around the demon’s wrists.

“Drop it,” I commanded, and the hound released her grip on the panicked demon, revealing deep gashes torn across his flesh. Two sets of long claw marks ran down the demon’s blue, blood stained t-shirt. The demon sat up, his chest heaving as he looked between Sam and Dean, then to Freya. He studied me last, eyeing me intensely. My pulse rose; what if he recognized me?

“Where’s Crowley?” Dean asked roughly.

The demon snapped his attention to Dean and contemplated his options; tell us nothing and die slowly, or tell us everything and die quickly.

“He’s gone,” the demon divulged, hoping providing information to the Winchesters would grant him some mercy. “Everyone’s gone. I’m the only one left.”

“I can see that,” Dean observed with a false smile. His face straightened and he added, “Where did they go?”

“I don’t know,” the demon swore nervously, visibly shaken by the situation. “They wouldn’t tell me in case I ran into you two.” He paused and redirected his gaze at me, his eyes narrowed. “I don’t recognize you,” he stated.

“Good,” I returned with a thin smile. “Where’s Crowley?”

“I told you I don’t know,” the demon insisted.

“Then you’re not much use, are you?” I growled. I crouched in front of the demon and slowly withdrew the Kurdish demon knife from the inner pocket of my black leather jacket. The demon nervously eyed my weapon, his heart rate increasing as I dramatically closed my fingers around the bone hilt.

“Wait!” the demon shouted with a frenzied desperation, putting his hands up in a lame effort to protect himself. “I know of someone who does. Let me live and I’ll take you to her.”

“I think one demon in the Impala is enough,” Dean spoke up, nodding sideways at me. “Why don’t you just tell us where to find her?”

The demon looked between Dean and myself before warily eyeing Sam. He quietly considered his options and, when he realized he had none, let out a long, defeated sigh.

“Vegas,” the demon said. “A crossroads demon, goes by Desdemona. She practically owns the city.”

“That just makes entirely way too much sense,” Dean commented, somewhat impressed by the idea of a demon operating an entire metropolis almost completely under the radar. Sam nodded in agreement. 

“How come we never thought of that before?” He wondered out loud. Dean shrugged.

“Thank you,” I said to the demon. “You’ve been very helpful.”

A look of relief spread across the demon’s face. His posture began to relax. He had betrayed his — our — kind, but the Winchesters had left him alive.

Or so he thought.

With a swift hand, I sunk my blade into his chest. The demon gasped as a familiar orange light began to flicker within him. I watched the light crackle and fade, my hand clasped firmly around the bone hilt as the demon died his painful death. I tried like hell not to enjoy it. That wasn’t the kind of person I was. John Winchester would never kill an innocent human for any reason, including getting to the demon under its skin. He would have let the demon go tell Crowley, would have greeted the armies of Hell head-on. But I wasn’t John Winchester anymore. I was what was left of him.


	6. Chapter 6

Nighttime in cities does not mean darkness, not even on the outskirts where the lights aren’t so numerous or pressed so closely together. 

An orange glow hung in the night sky like a heavy vapor, acting as a curtain between the earth and the stars, dulling the brilliance of the not-quite-full moon. The arid heat of New Mexico was completely still, easily carrying the deep rumble of late night traffic on the freeway across the dry, dusty land.

Albuquerque. It wasn’t our final destination, but it was where Sam and Dean hit a wall. The seasoned hunters were running on fumes by the time we reached the desert city, and unanimously decided to spring for a couple of beds at a tacky, western-themed motel just beyond the city limits. As someone who didn’t require sleep, and as something the boys only vaguely trusted, I was not invited into their room, and was instead forced to kill time with Freya in the wide, uneven parking lot that encircled the inn. At first, Sam had proposed leaving me in the Impala, handcuffed to the steering wheel, but Dean felt less comfortable with the idea of leaving _some demon_ unattended inside his precious baby, and decided I had earned enough trust to be left to my own devices.

Motel parking lots in New Mexico — or anywhere, for that matter —at three o’clock in the morning are boring. I played fetch with Freya and a long, awkward stick for a while before I wondered if anyone was watching, and if they were, I considered how freakishly odd it must appear to them, watching a man throwing a stick that seemed to return on its own. So, to Freya’s dismay, I stopped and instead ambled in circles around the motel. We did this for an hour or so until it had become monotonous and boring, and we retired to the sidewalk outside Sam and Dean’s door where I chain-smoked cigarettes and sipped whisky from a stainless steel flask. I gazed up at the moon that struggled against the veil of light pollution, and tried not to think of all the things that plagued me, the things that fueled me to run and made standing still a living — or post-living — hell. I tried not to think about the redheaded man I had killed in Baton Rouge, and I balled my hands into fists when I failed.

It was nearly five o’clock in the morning when their door creaked open and shattered the bitter thoughts that had plagued me in my solitude. I remained still with my head tilted skyward as I lazily puffed on the cigarette I held loosely between my lips. I listened to the sound of boots on the concrete sidewalk, and Dean eventually wandered into view from my left. He was dressed in the same blue jeans and black and white plaid shirt he had been wearing earlier, but now they looked rumpled and tired, matching Dean's demeanor. He did not appear well rested and it took me a moment to realize the weary expression he wore wasn’t new and it wasn’t temporary. Dean looked tired because he was utterly and perpetually exhausted. It took me a lot less time to understand I was the one that had done this to him.

_What have I done?_

I liked to think what separated me from the other demons, the more demony demons, was a conscience. And it was, kind of. Mostly though, it was guilt.

Dean sleepily leaned against the trunk of the Impala and exhaled heavily. Crickets sang out to the creeping dawn from god only knew where, and their sound only emphasized the silence that lay between me and my son.

 _Say something_ , I mentally barked at myself. _Kill the silence before Dean realizes how awkward it is and starts asking questions._

“Can’t sleep?” I said as my gaze shifted up to him.

“I got a few hours,” he said, stifling a yawn. He stretched his arms and stuffed his hands into his pockets. “You didn’t take off.”

“I thought about it,” I admitted with a shrug. “But I wouldn’t get far. Not without smoking out.”

“That’s why you stayed?” Dean asked skeptically with a raised brow. “You didn’t want to find a new meat— _body_?”

“Do you know how hard it is to find someone willing to let a demon possess them?” I asked.

“Not from a personal standpoint,” he admitted with a nod and a thoughtful expression. “But I can’t imagine it’s an easy feat. What’s with that anyway? Your…” He paused to wave his hand as he searched for the right word. “Vessel. Max. What’s wrong with him?”

“ _What’s wrong with him?_ ” I echoed, a little more than mildly offended, though I wasn’t entirely sure why.

“Yeah,” Dean said unapologetically. “I mean, there had to be something a little off for the guy to actually _let_ a demon possess him. So, is Max a devil worshiper or just plain nuts?”

I drew in a lungful of nicotine as I contemplated my response.

“Max…” I haltingly began, breathing out a cloud of smoke that seemed to cling to the breezeless air and lazily drifted into the parking lot where it hovered before it dissipated. “Max did four tours in Afghanistan. Saw a lot of fucked up shit. Kind of messed him up.” I rolled up my jacket sleeves and turned my forearms up. Dean leaned over to peer down at the raised, white scars that ran down Max’s wrists.

“Oh.” Dean spoke so low it was almost a whisper.

“I offered him something in return for letting me pilot his skeleton,” I continued, offhandedly confirming Dean’s suspicions.

“Which was…?”

“Peace.”

“Peace?”

“I can make him sleep,” I explained as Dean leaned back and I rolled my sleeves back down. “He’s asleep most of the time.”

“That’s it?” Dean asked, not entirely satisfied with my response.

“Believe me.” I paused to take in a long drag from my cigarette. “It’s a lot better than what he was dealing with.”

Dean crossed his arms, but pondered my words. A subtle smile tugged at his lips and an almost inaudible chuckle escaped his throat.

“What?” I asked, narrowing my eyes at him.

“Nothing,” Dean said, shaking his head. “It’s just, you’re either the weirdest demon I’ve ever met, or you’re doing a decent job playing us.”

I didn’t respond to this. Instead, I took in another deep breath of smoke. Dean shifted uncomfortably and cleared his throat.

“You think I could bum one of those?” he reluctantly asked, nodding towards the cigarette. I wordlessly tossed the white and gold box to him.

“Thanks,” he said, helping himself. He stared down at the pack in his hands and a small, fond smile spread across his lips. “My dad used to smoke these.”

“Yeah?” I asked nervously, watching Dean light his cigarette with a silver zippo. He inhaled deeply, and exhaled with satisfaction. I hadn’t thought twice about it when he’d asked for a cigarette; I had seen him smoking thousands of times, back when I was alive and still his father. But his look of guilty indulgence told me this was his first cigarette in a long time.

“You ever run into him?” Dean asked thoughtfully. “My dad? You were a hunter, right?”

At first, I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t want to lie to my son. But didn’t want him to find out what had become of his old man.

“Can’t say I did,” I settled on a vague, half lie.

“How long you been a demon?” Dean prodded curiously after a moment, attempting casual conversation to fill the silence.

“Long enough,” I supplied another hazy answer.

“You know, there’s a cure for demonism,” Dean informed me in a low tone, as if he were telling me classified information.

“Is that so?” I asked with uncertain interest.

“It is,” Dean confirmed with a nod. “You do us a few favors and we might consider curing you.”

I wordlessly nodded at his offer as my gaze fell to the black asphalt. I pondered the prospect of being cured. Of being a human again. Crowley couldn’t drag me back to Hell if I wasn’t a demon. Unless…

“Don’t look too excited,” Dean said archly. He flicked the ash from the tip of his cigarette. “I know demonism is fun when you’re a demon. But you don’t actually want to be one, do you?”

“No,” I quickly shook my head. “Fuck no. It’s just, if I’m cured, what happens to my soul when I die?”

“I dunno,” Dean said with a shrug. “I guess maybe that depends on how you spend your second chance?”

“And if my soul technically belongs to Hell?”

Dean’s brows furrowed in confusion before they raised with sudden realization.

“You sold your soul?” he asked, though it came across as more of a statement.

“I’d like to be human again,” I insisted, neither addressing nor ignoring the question. “Believe me. I hate being a demon. This is not fucking fun.”

_It’s a little fun._

“But I’d rather not go through the trouble of being cured if I’m just going to end up in Hell again.”

“My dad sold his soul,” Dean casually mentioned. “And he got out.”

“You don’t think your old man is in Hell?” I asked with an arched brow.

_Where do they think I am?_

Wisps of grey smoke encircled Dean's head as he puffed on his cigarette and carefully considered my question.

“I guess I don’t know where he went,” he admitted, a fact that visibly weighed on him. “Why?” He asked, his body suddenly tense. “Have you seen him? Down there?”

_Shit._

“Not that I know of,” I lied. Dean exhaled a short breath of relief and eased his rigid stance.

“I mean, if he were in Hell, Crowley would have bragged about that, right?” Dean tried to justify his belief that I was somewhere else. Somewhere other than Hell. Somewhere other than possessing the twenty-eight year old man sitting on the sidewalk beside him.

“I’m sure someone would have mentioned it,” I agreed, despite knowing the truth. Being the truth.

Dean nodded and drew in a breath of smoke.

“Crowley definitely would have mentioned it,” he reassured himself again. “He didn’t deserve Hell, anyway.”

“No?” I questioned with a challenging tone. Dean raised a brow and I realized what I’d done. I wasn’t supposed to question anything Dean said about me, John me. I wasn’t supposed to have known me.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Dean began. “He wasn’t father of the year or anything. But he definitely didn’t deserve to end up in the pit. It wasn’t really his fault. Not all of it.”

“What wasn’t his fault?” I asked, as I carelessly tossed the stub of my cigarette into the parking lot.

“You haven’t heard the story?” Dean casually asked.

“I’ve heard some stories. Apparently not all of them.”

“My dad had been marked,” Dean explained. “By a cupid. He and my mom.”

A coldness crept into my chest and my heart stopped.

“What?” I whispered. I sat rigid, unable to breathe. “My mom’s death, Sam’s curse - it was all part of Heaven’s fucking plan. He was basically under an Enochian love spell,” Dean continued, blithely unaware of the change in my expression as the coldness inside me began to give way to a fiery rage. “His whole quest for revenge was pretty much fueled by that. Intensified, anyway.”

I clenched my fingers into fists as the fury blazed inside my chest, extended its flames and engulfed every part of my very existence. The anger was so deep, so raw, I began to shake. Everything I’d done since falling in love with Mary had been out of my control. Turning to hunting, allowing fear and vengeance to consume me for decades, destroying the future my sons could have had; they were all things I never would have done had it not been for those goddamn angels.

“Why—?” I trailed off, my voice breaking as I tried to hold the temper from my tone. “Why would the angels want us— _your_ parents to get together?”

“For me and Sam,” Dean casually replied, seemingly unaware of the slip or my look of shock. “We had to be born. So we could be the vessels for their fucking family feud bullshit. I bet they regret it now,” he added with a rueful chuckle.

It was all Fate. My life, all our lives, had been predetermined by angels. And I had gone to Hell for the things they had always intended me to do.

I wanted to put my fist through the asphalt. I wanted to let out a terrible yell and rip something in half. I wanted to kill an angel.

Instead, I shakily lit another cigarette. I attempted to quiet my rage, for the sake of Dean, and the safety of every person sleeping in that motel. For the sake of my cover.

“I hadn’t heard that story,” I said, attempting — and miserably failing — a calm voice.

“You okay?” Dean asked, clearly detecting a hint of wrath in my voice. He took one last puff of his cigarette and flicked the stub into the parking lot where it landed with a tiny explosion of embers. “You look a little on edge.”

“I’m a demon,” I replied with an hurried huff of smoke.

“So, good and bad?” Dean stepped away from the Impala. “I’m gonna try to grab another hour. We’ll hit the road in a few hours tops.”

Right. The grimoire. In the midst of the revelations of what Heaven had done to me, I had nearly forgotten about the goddamn grimoire and fucking Las Vegas and that bastard Crowley.

“Take your time,” I said with a bitter sarcasm, turing to face Dean as he ambled behind me towards his room. “The grimoire will just jump out of Crowley’s hands on its own.”

A small smile tugged at Dean’s lips as he cracked the red door open.

“Man, you and my dad would’ve gotten along great,” he commented, shaking his head as he stepped into his room.

I turned back to face the parking lot and Dean quietly closed the door, leaving me to my thoughts and my rage. Freya wandered to my side and laid herself beside me, slumping lazily against the concrete as she put her head on my lap and stared up at me.

“I know what you’re thinking,” I spoke quietly, gently petting her head. “Vengeance is what landed me in Hell in the first place.”

Fate or not, the revenge I craved was all me. It was who I was.

Or did the angels make me that man?

A frustrated growl rolled through my throat as another surge of hot rage coursed through me. I clenched my fists and fought the urge to slam them onto the pavement. A restlessness began to pull at me, a hunger that would not be satisfied until I saw an angel dead.

“The first one I see, Freya,” I said, my voice a dark, low grumble. “I swear, I’ll kill it.”


	7. Chapter 7

The road to Las Vegas was long, and time seemed to drag on like it had in hell. In reality, it took us just under eight hours to reach the city of sin, but from where I was sitting in the back seat of the Impala with a chest full of rage and a mind full of chaos, it felt more like weeks. Towns and cars and burned, red earth blended together, like a painting splashed with water; I saw everything, but none of it registered, and it all ran together in a giant mess of almost memory.

I was so engrossed in the utter hate I felt for the angels, that I almost didn't hear the plan.

"Maddox!" Sam snapped from the passenger's seat. Judging by the irritation on his face, it hadn't been the first time he'd called my name.

Okay, so I had missed the plan.

"What?" I asked, looking around, as the world came back into focus.

The Impala was parked outside a greasy-spoon diner on the outskirts of Las Vegas. A thin haze of gray clouds had settled above the city in a non-threatening gloom that did little but remind me of how hot it was. Dean was wiggling free from his flannel over-shirt, and Sam was giving me his "seriously?" look.

"I asked if you were good with the plan," Sam said.

"A, do I have a choice?" I asked. "B, what plan?"

He rolled his eyes and shot a scowl to Dean, who sighed.

"We're going to paint a trap," Sam informed me shortly, sounding aggravated by the fact he had to repeat himself. "You're going to hit the Strip and lure Desdemona to us."

"How do you know she'll follow me?" I questioned.

"You're not supposed to be up here, right?" He began, and I hesitantly nodded. "Don't you think she would find it interesting that you're not in the pit? Interesting enough to maybe follow you?"

"Follow me or ride me right back to Hell?" I grumbled.

It occurred to me that Desdemona might recognize my face, the sunken, smoky one I hid beneath Max's. It would certainly work, getting her to follow the demonized version of John Winchester. Only I worried it would work a little too well. That the plan would go off without a hitch, and she'd end up revealing my secret identity to my sons. Either way, I was fucked.

"For the record, I am not okay with this plan," I said, my severe unwillingness to act as bait temporarily overriding my vendetta against the angels.

"We'd do it," Dead said distantly, sounding almost sincere as he straightened his black t-shirt. "But I don't think she's going to come out and play if she sees us. We've rolled through here enough times. If she didn't come out then, there's no reason she would now."

"Smart girl," I muttered under my breath. I reached into the seat next to me and absently stroked Freya's head.

"Besides, you're—" Sam began, but I was quick to cut him off.

"Just a demon," I finished for him, rolling my eyes. "Got it, thanks."

"I was going to say you're the only one who can actually see Desdemona," Sam said with a faint smile. "But yeah, that too."

I gave Sam a cold stare as the pain of a hundred knives exploded in my chest.

"You know, I used to be someone," I mentioned through clenched teeth.

"And then you died and went to Hell, so," Sam argued without hostility or any interest in actually quarreling, and casually turned around to face the silver and sea-foam green diner.

Of all the things my boys had said and done in the past two days, it was Sam's indifference that stung the most. Arguing was all we ever really did when I was alive. He did it with passion, and he did it because, deep down, for some fucking reason, he cared. His disregard of me now just made everything feel more… real.

"Dude," Dean said with a mild crease in his brow. "Ixnay on the ell-hay." Sam raised a brow and shifted to face his brother. Dean cupped the right side of his mouth with his hand to hide his lips, and in a low tone said, "He sold his soul."

"You do know I can hear you, right?" I said, rolling my eyes.

"So?" Sam said to Dean, ignoring my comment.

"I just think we could empathize a little, that's all," Dean said with a shrug.

Sam sighed in annoyance and ran a hand through his long hair.

"I'm sick and tired of demons, Dean. I don't trust them, and in case you forgot, I still hate them and I thought you did too. No offense." He paused to shoot me a quick, semi-apologetic look. "A little offense."

"None taken," I said, folding my arms across my chest to indicate I was, despite my best efforts, mildly offended.

"Name one demon we've worked with that hasn't screwed us over at least once," Sam challenged Dean, whose brow creased in deep concentration. His face lit up temporarily and his lips parted to speak, but his expression quickly fell and he closed his mouth again as he realized that there had yet to be a demon who did not, at some point, fuck them over.

"If I may point out a small detail," I spoke up. I leaned forward and rested my arms along the back of the front seat, causing Sam to instinctively lean away from me. "I'm not really working with you. You're kind of blackmailing me here. Any time you want to back out of that and let me get back to hunting, feel fucking free, because I assure you, I'm not thrilled the fucking Winchesters are risking my ass for a goddamn book."

Sam tilted his head as he pondered my rant. After a moment of thought he cracked the door open.

"You coming?" He called to no one in particular as he climbed out of the car and into the hot afternoon.

A soft groan slipped past my lips and I grudgingly opened the door with the sun-bleached army man stuck in the groove under the silver handle.

"Stay," I commanded Freya, who gave me a disappointed look as she dramatically slumped across the back seat. "Don't worry girl," I assured her, playfully brushing the top of her head with my hand. "We won't be stuck here much longer."

Dean and I climbed out of the Impala and, as we stepped out into the hot desert air, the familiar sound of Led Zepplin's Ramble On began to play from the depths of Dean's pockets. Dean pulled out his phone, glanced at the screen and absently waved Sam and I on.

"Go on in," he stated, swiping his index finger along the bottom of the screen. "I gotta take this." He put the device to his ear and a tiny grin pulled at the corners of his lips. "Hey, where are you? _What_? Why?"

I turned and sluggishly followed Sam into the diner. The floors were well worn, and checkered in black and white squares of linoleum. The upholstery on the booths and the round stools that stood around a long white counter were the same sea-foam green as the establishment's exterior. Cold air blasted from overhead vents and clashed with the hot air that tried to drift out from the kitchen visible through a large, windowless opening. A greasy, meaty scent wafted throughout tiny restaurant; it smelled like a heart attack and it made my mouth water.

Sam led the way, choosing an empty table along a window that overlooked the parking lot and the busy intersection on which the diner stood. He slid into the booth and quickly busied himself with one of the laminated, double sided menus tucked between the thick window and the silver napkin dispenser. I took the empty seat opposite from him and sullenly stared across the off-white, faux marble table top at my son. He wasn't ignoring me, not entirely, but his demeanor was cold and rigid enough to tell me he wasn't exactly open to conversation, either.

"I can't believe we're wasting our time here," I mumbled grumpily as I gazed out the window at Dean, who casually paced around the Impala with his phone pressed against his ear.

"Yeah," Sam said with a heavy sarcasm. "Nourishment is a huge waste of time."

"Can't you just order something to go?" I grumbled. I restlessly drummed my thumbs against the table as Sam continued to read his menu.

"We could," he admitted without looking at me, his voice calm but cold. "But we don't really have anywhere to go until it gets dark, so there's not really any point. Unless you have somewhere you need to be?" He tore his eyes away from the menu long enough to shoot me a smirk.

"Apparently not until dark," I muttered sharply.

A busty waitress in a stiff white dress approached the table with a tired smile. She pulled a pad of paper and a pen from the pocket of her pink apron.

"What can I get you boys?"

I ordered a cup of coffee, and Sam ordered himself a salad, and a bacon cheeseburger for Dean. I wrinkled my nose at him as the waitress scurried away. He shot me a questioning look in return.

"Salad? My god, you're a fucking hippie."

Sam arched a brow at this, but clearly took no offense to the term that had long since lost its edge, insult wise. He remained silent until the waitress returned with a white mug of piping hot coffee, which she wordlessly set in front of me.

"Coffee?" he retorted. "Thought this was a waste of your time"

"Gotta order something if I'm going to sit here, right?" I asked. "It's called being polite."

Sam rolled his eyes.

"What?" I asked.

"Nothing," he replied. "I'm just not buying this whole 'nice demon' act you've got going on."

"It's not an act," I insisted. "Why don't you trust me?"

This finally provoked a reaction.

"If you know who we are, then you know why I can't trust you," Sam snapped, his tone bordering on combative. I had a sudden desire to goad him into a fight, to see that familiar passionate reaction. "Anyway, I thought you didn't care."

"I didn't," I replied. "But I'm beginning to second guess my chances of freedom if you don't trust me at least a little by the time this grimoire business is over and done with."

A tiny smile lifted at Sam's lips.

"You're smarter than most demons then," he acknowledged, offhandedly admitting he had no intention of letting me walk free. "Which just makes it harder for me to trust you."

I stared him down, feeling my jaw clench. I was caught, frustrated by my situation but strangely pleased with Sam's unwavering distrust for my kind.

"Your old man would have been proud of you," I commented.

That did it. I should have known it would have taken a sincere and innocuous remark to send him off the edge. He slammed a fist on the table, the sound resounding through the restaurant, causing the other customers pause in their conversations to stare at us. His jaw tightened as an angry, red flush rose across his cheeks.

"You don't get to talk about my dad," he spoke quietly but fiercely. "You don't know anything about him," he jabbed his index finger at me as the fury seemed to rise in him. "He's dead because of you bastards. Your kind killed both of my parents, so don't sit there and pretend like you know shit about what my dad would feel right now."

I had finally gotten the rise from him I had been fishing for, but not the satisfaction. It wasn't like old times. It was nothing like our arguments used to be. His words were passionate, yes, but they were hateful, and it only reminded me that nothing I did or said would make me feel normal again.

This was my new normal.

The bell attached to the diner's door jingled as it swung open and Dean stepped inside. He strolled towards us, the cool breeze of the air-conditioning bringing a look of relief to his face. He cheerfully took a seat beside Sam.

"Just talked to Cas," he announced, and I couldn't quite tell if he didn't notice the thick tension between Sam and me, or if he simply didn't care.

"Where is he?" Sam was quick to ask, still a little shaken from the brief but intense tongue-lashing he had just given me.

"Fucking Panama," Dean said with a disappointed breath. He perked up when he spied my untouched coffee, and reached across the table. "You drinking that?" He asked, not waiting for a response before helping himself. He took a slow sip and his face lit up, suddenly remembering something.

" _Panama_?!" Sam echoed in disbelief as Dean awkwardly attempted to extract something from his back pocket. "What the hell is Cas doing in _Panama_?"

"Following a lead," Dean replied as he produced a small silver flask. He unscrewed the cap and carefully poured what appeared to be whisky into the hot black liquid. "I told him we'd let him know how tonight plays out with Desdemona."

"You think Crowley'd stash the grimoire down there?" Sam wondered out loud.

"I don't see why not," Dean said thoughtfully, tucking his flask safely away in his back pocket. He paused to take a sip of coffee. "I mean, we do kind of have a harder time getting across borders than we do sneaking in and out of literally all the afterlives."

"Yeah," Sam said with a nod.

"Wait," I spoke up, stuck on something Dean had said. "Cas? As in _Castiel_? That broken-winged, ate up motherfucker?"

Dean shot me an icy glower.

"Watch it," he said warningly, giving me the only inch of forgiveness he could muster when it came to putting down his celestial friend.

"Why is an angel checking a lead for you?" My eyes narrowed and I folded my arms across my chest. "Why is this grimoire so important to you?"

Dean gave Sam a questioning glance, to which he responded with a disapproving look. Dean turned his gaze back to me, and quietly determined the level of trust I had earned in the last day and a half. He shrugged.

"The grimoire has a specific spell," Dean said with little hesitance, still far more trusting of me than his little brother. "A decoder spell. It can translate anything on the planet, including the angel tablet. We're helping Cas track it down so he can open Heaven back up."

"You're doing this… for the angels?" I slowly asked with a note of disgust.

"Well, we're doing to help an angel," Dean admitted. "Why? Is that a problem?"

Fucking a right it's a goddamn problem.

I gritted my teeth and produced an exaggerated grin.

"Nope."


	8. Viva Las Vegas

The neon lights of the Las Vegas Strip burned into my eyes as a sea of jolly people rushed around me, drunk on gambling-induced adrenaline and fruity cocktails served with tiny paper umbrellas. The night sky was dark — as dark as any city sky could really get — but the city was as bright at day. Music and laughter cascaded from casinos and hotels, and clashed against the vibration of traffic like a wave blasting against a break wall. A hot, arid breeze carried the scent of sweat and gasoline with hints of chlorine and greasy food that mingled into one nauseating but intoxicating smell.

The plan was to search for Desdemona without making it seem like I was doing so.

"Make it look like you're on the run or something," Dean had recommended before I left him and Sam in the designated alleyway with a bright orange demon trap, and Freya (an arrangement none of us were thrilled with, but taking a hellhound for a walk down the Las Vegas strip was out of the question). "Try to blend in, but not too much."

Which is, essentially, what I did. I played blackjack at Bally's under golden ceilings. I strolled the elegant red floors of the MGM Grand and fed slot machines coin after coin. I drank whisky by the luxurious pools at the Tropicana, and threw red dice across a green felt craps table in the pyramid shaped Luxor. I repeated everything at Excalibur, New York New York, and the Monte Carlo. I pretended like I was having fun, while making it seem like I was trying to blend in with the masses. But I wasn't really blending in, and I wasn't really having fun.

Big surprise, right?

Personality aside, it was difficult to find anything fun about the circumstances. I was parading myself around under hundreds of security cameras in a crossroads demon's territory while sulking over the raw hatred that was festering in my gut. I maintained enough awareness to scan the faces in the masses of people that milled around in Hawaiian shirts and tacky visors, but not enough to truly see everything. I could hear my drill sergeant's voice screaming in my ear "distracted men are dead men", but I was too consumed to do anything about it.

Sam hated me. Dean trusted me, which I found as equally relieving as I found it unsettling. I desperately wanted to take my revenge on those bastard angels for what they had done to me, and the fact I was helping them only fed the fire that blazed within me. I felt like I was going to erupt in a hot fury in the middle of the Las Vegas Strip.

And then I saw her.

She was standing beside the ornate fountains outside the Bellagio in a slender red dress and a black fur coat. Her vessel had long, straight black hair, dark, almond shaped eyes and a delicate, round face. The real Desdemona, the demon beneath the attractive mask, was a lipless red vapor with sunken eyes and gnarled, stringy hair. And she was staring right into me.

I stopped dead in my tracks and gave her what I hoped appeared like a shocked expression. My eyes widened in pretend horror and I put in the effort to slowly back away in fake fear. I crossed the street with an exaggerated skittishness, and wound my way into the horde of people that shuffled along the sidewalk. I walked with a hurried step, trying to make it look like I was trying to loose her, but I walked slow enough to make sure she was following me.

I took a sharp right and continued my overly-nervous charade, making tracks down the sidewalk towards the alley where my sons and my hound were waiting for me. But I didn't go that far. Instead, I made a sudden right into an alley three blocks from my boys and their demon trap, and I slipped into the shadows of the empty alleyway. I peered over my shoulder as I walked down the dark pathway, and, unsurprisingly, discovered I was not being followed. When I turned my gaze forward, I was forced to stop short; Desdemona was standing right in front of me.

My eyes grew wide with pretend shock as a small, sly smile spread across her red lips.

"Shit," I cursed under my breath as I cautiously sidestepped her and slowly edged my way around her petit frame.

"Shit is right," she spoke sharply. She glowered as I gradually began to back away from her. "Can you imagine what Crowley's going to do to you?" she sternly questioned, following me with a slow, menacing step. Her red eyes locked onto mine and a devious smile crossed her lips as she backed me into a brick wall. "He's never going to let you die."

"You know who I am?" I questioned with a fearful voice.

"Of course I know who you are," she replied with a confident grin. "John Winchester."

I gulped.

"I have to admit, I'm impressed," Desdemona began to banter. "No one has ever eluded the legions of Hell before, not for one second. Yet you've managed to escape it. Twice."

"I am John fucking Winchester," I replied coldly.

"Crowley is not going to take this lightly," she half warned, half bragged, practically giddy she had found me. "He's going to make an example of you."

Desdemona stared hatefully into my eyes and she flashed me a wicked grin as she clamped her right hand hard on my left shoulder. We stood like this for a good minute before she realized she couldn't transport me as she had intended. Her expression fell into a frustrated confusion, her brows creasing at me as a sly grin crept across my lips. Her gaze fell from me to the ground where she found the black demon trap I had painted hours before, the edge touching the wall I had been pressing myself against.

"Are you stupid?" she asked with a furious irritation and a violent fire behind her eyes. "You know you trapped yourself. With me."

"Oh no, sweetheart," I said. I leaned forward to whisper a snide, overly-confident comment into her ear; "I trapped you with me."

The fury I had kept pent up within me all day was unleashing itself. It guided my hand as I grabbed her by her shoulders and thrust her up against the brick wall I had been pressing myself against. Her body collided with the red brick wall that cracked upon impact. Adrenaline coursed through my veins as my fingers closed around her throat and I held my Kurdish knife to her belly.

"Now," I whispered, leaning into her as she gasped. "I have some questions, and it would be in your best interest to answer them honestly."

"Ask your questions," Desdemona spat without fear. "I won't tell you shit."

I gradually pushed my knife into her stomach at an upward angle, making sure she felt every inch of my weapon. I put a hand over her mouth to stifle her screams as the skin around the blade sizzled and hot orange flickers of light webbed across her flesh.

"Where's Crowley?" I whispered into her ear. I carefully removed my hand from her lips to allow her to speak. She gasped in pain as she glared at me.

"Fuck you," she shakily spat.

I pushed the blade in a little further, and I tried like hell not to enjoy every bit of it.

"Where's Crowley?" I whispered again.

"How… stupid… do you think I… am?" she panted.

"Stupid enough to follow John Winchester into a dark alley," I whispered smugly. I drove the knife in a little deeper, carefully avoiding her vital organs. I wasn't trying to kill her. Not yet.

"Where. The fuck. Is Crowley. And his fucking grimoire?"

A slow, shaky smile crept across her lips.

"Look at what you've become," she said with a weak sneer. "You're a monster, John Winchester. And you're going to burn."

I pulled my blade from her stomach and swiftly pressed the bloodied tip of it against her throat. I punctured her flesh ever so slightly, releasing a thick bead of blood that trickled down her neck and ran down her chest. Desdemona let loose a fleeting glimpse of fear in the form of a sharp gasp.

"Last chance," I warned.

"I hope Crowley force-feeds you the slaughtered remains of your children," she spoke through gritted teeth as a bitter smile twitched across her lips. "Go to Hell."

I slowly pushed my blade into her neck, and I watched with satisfaction as the familiar orange flicker ignited within her. The hot light illuminated the skeleton beneath her body as she stared into me with her face twisted in excruciating pain. I locked my eyes on hers and waited for the light to fade away before I jerked my weapon free of her delicate neck and carelessly allowed her to collapse at my feet.

_You just killed another person._

A frigid flood of numbness swelled inside me as I glanced down at the body lying at my feet. It wasn't really the fact that I had killed again that bothered me (which was also, in itself, worrisome). What unnerved me was how I, again, lacked hesitation. I didn't even think about it, not once.

_Her body has probably been dead for years,_ I tried to convince myself as I pocketed the bloodied blade. I turned my back on the corpse and walked to the edge of the thinly painted trap where I stooped down and extracted a small bottle of water tucked safely in my jacket pocket. I poured it along the black paint, concentrating the spill to one half inch spot in an effort to break the circle just enough. The paint slowly began to chip and break away and, within a minute's time, I was walking free from the trap I had set.

It seemed like a lot of trouble to go through just to protect my identity, but I couldn't think of anything worse than Sam and Dean discovering exactly what had become of their father.

The realization of what I'd done and how I'd done it gradually began to sink in as I trudged away from the body Desdemona had been piloting and headed towards the street. A weighted guilt gnawed at my gut and trembled in my limbs. My chest tightened as I somberly limbered down the sidewalk.

This wasn't who I was.

_It's not the person you **were**. It's the monster you **are**._

_Fuck._

I had been a demon for well over five hundred years, in terms of Hell time. But I hadn't truly grasped what it was I had become, not until that moment. I had known it was bad, but I never dreamed I could ever be this… disgusting.

I tried to swallow my shame as I rounded a corner and sauntered down the alley where Sam and Dean were waiting in the shadows with their hands clutched tightly around their respective demon-killing instruments. They appeared tense, unhappy they had been left in Freya's company, despite the fact she was innocently laying in front of a blue dumpster several feet away from them. I arranged a casual expression on my face as I approached them, and loosened my posture. I tried to forget I was the thing I never wanted to become, the beast I hated more than anything in existence, and I lit myself a cigarette.

The rigid expression in Dean's face fell into a look of confusion as he watched a plume of white smoke escape my lips and trail behind me as I walked.

"Where's Desdemona?" Dean questioned, searching behind me for the demon who was supposed to be following me.

"Desdemona is dead," I replied with a smoky, nonchalant breath. "Three blocks that way." I lazily gestured to the right.

"Why is she 'three blocks that way'?" Sam shortly questioned.

"She recognized me," I supplied them with a vague truth, tiptoeing around the fact I had lured her there. "Threatened to take me to Crowley."

Sam exhaled a heavy, irritated sigh and rolled his eyes. He shook his head and bowed it in disappointment.

"Did she at least tell you where Crowley is?" Dean questioned, his tone slightly more forgiving than his brother's had been.

"I asked," I said. "But she seemed pretty adamant about not telling me."

"Great," Dean said, throwing his hands up in frustration. "Now we have to find another demon."

"I can arrange that."

The unexpected and uninvited voice came from just behind Sam and Dean. They whirled around to face a crossroads demon guised as a young, dark haired man in an expensive white suit. He flicked his wrists with minimal effort and sent Sam sailing to the left, and to Dean the right, pinning them each to a wall. A fierce rage blazed behind his eyes as he strode towards me, and I reached for my knife. I was quick, but he was faster; I barely had the Kurdish blade out of my pocket when he kicked it from my grasp with the sole of his patent leather shoe, and it clattered to the ground. My cigarette tumbled from between my lips as he clenched his fingers around my throat and pushed his face into mine.

"You killed Desdemona," he accurately accused. His jaw clenched as he stared me dead in the eyes. A look of enraged recognition crossed his face as he scowled at me through narrowed eyes. "I know who you are."

"So did… Desdemona," I gasped as I tried to pry his fingers from around my neck. "'S… what got… her killed."

I swung my left arm against his, trying to weaken his grasp, but his grip around my throat held fast. I swung my right fist into his face, but he didn't even flinch. I attempted to knee him in the gut, but he shook me like a rag doll and tightened his fingers, nearly crushing my esophagus.

That was when I noticed Freya slinking through the shadows behind him.

"You gonna try to take me to Crowley, too?" I tried to stall him to give Freya time to sneak up on him. I tauntingly flashed my black eyes at him, along with a prideful grin.

"Nope. I'm going to kill you," the demon growled threateningly.

"I'd like to see you try."

The demon — Desdemona's lover, judging by the fury he held — raised his left hand, readying it to strike me, when a savage growl rolled from Freya's throat. She pounced him before he had a chance to react, slamming into his body with such a force he lost his grip on me, as well as his hold on my boys, and tumbled pathetically to the hard ground below. A terrified yelp emitted from the his gaping mouth as Freya's lips curled to expose the sharp teeth that loomed over the demon's face. Freya snarled and snapped at him as she dug her claws into his chest and frantically began tearing him into bloody ribbons.

From the corner of my eye I caught Dean turning his head away in discomfort and disgust, the carnage reminding him of his own experience with hellhounds. Sam, on the other hand, watched what appeared to him like a body tearing itself apart as it squirmed and screamed in horror and pain. He watched not because he wanted to, but because he was looking for a way to jump in without receiving the sharp end of Freya's wrath in the process. That or, as it occurred to me later, he was trying to calculate exactly where Freya was so he could take her out along with the demon we were not expecting.

For a minute I just stood there, watching Freya as her jaws clamped around the demon's neck and she dragged him to the demon trap to keep him from smoking out. I cursed the red-haired demon we met in Baton Rouge, the one who told us about Desdemona. He had set us up, I was certain of it. He didn't mention this demon as a screw you to us for killing him. I tried not to consider the fact that this easily could have been avoided if I had bothered to set aside my burning rage for a few measly hours and actually focused on my surroundings. But it was easier and far less embarrassing to blame the bastard demon from Baton Rouge.

After I'd had my fill of cursing dead demons and watching the live demon writhing and gasping and bleeding, I stooped down and scooped up my blade. I ambled into the trap to where he was laying with his white suit drenched in red and torn to shreds. His chest had been ripped open to expose his ribcage, and his stomach was hemorrhaging dark blood. I withdrew a cigarette from my jacket pocket and casually lit it as the demon squirmed under Freya's teeth.

"Having fun?" I asked vaingloriously. I sucked in a deeply satisfying lungful of smoke and quickly exhaled it through the side of my mouth. "I'm going to cut you a deal," I said, speaking around the cigarette between my lips as I held up my blade for the demon to see. "You tell us what we need to know, and I will give you a quick death. Tell me to fuck myself, and I watch Freya tear you apart until I've smoked every last one of my cigarettes." I paused to flash him a wolfish grin. "And I just bought a new pack."

"D-damn you," the demon sputtered in a hoarse, muted voice. He coughed up a mouthful of blood and grimaced as Freya tightened her jaw around his neck. "Fucking… Winchesters."

I drew in another drag of smoke and nervously side-eyed my boys as they edged their way toward the trap. Their expressions were hardened and curious, but not suspicious. The comment had brushed by them without a second thought, and I exhaled a smoky breath of relief.

"Where's Crowley?" I asked, glancing back down to the demon. He glared up at me through narrowed eyes, and Freya clamped down even harder.

"M-Michigan," he stammered. "T-town called Traverse. Old asylum."

"Does he have the grimoire with him?" Dean gruffly questioned, and the demon vigorously nodded.

"Y-yes," he gasped.

"Thank you," I spoke down to the demon, who stared up at me with wet, pain filled eyes. "You've been very helpful."

"S-so glad I could help," the demon spat sarcastically through the blood that trickled from his lips at a steady rate. He watched me as I crouched down beside him, and positioned the tip of my blade against his chest. "C-Crowley's never going to l-let you d-die."

"Yeah," I casually said. "I heard that one."

I thrust my knife into his chest and, with a sick satisfaction, watched the light explode in his body. It crackled and sparked before it gradually dimmed and faded away, leaving a hollow corpse in its wake. I peered down at the mess of a body lying in a pool of its own blood, and I felt…

Nothing.

I didn't feel terrible, or guilty over the fact that I didn't feel guilty. I simply felt nothing.

What is happening to me?

I stood upright and calmly pocketed my knife as I turned to face Sam and Dean. They stared at me with hardened expressions, their hands still gripped around their blades.

"What?" I asked, puffing lazily on my cigarette. "You boys gonna let me out?"

"That was kind of brutal," Sam commented in a scolding tone.

"He was just a demon," I snidely shot, and he narrowed his eyes at me.

"I meant your hellhound," he said coldly, and I rolled my eyes.

"You've got to be fucking kidding me," I muttered, more to myself than to Sam and Dean.

"I don't want it in the car," Dean said firmly, his voice deeper than normal in an attempt to mask his fear of Freya.

" _She_ just saved our asses," I heatedly pointed out. " _She_ only does _that_ when _I_ am in trouble, and _we_ are a package deal."

Sam and Dean exchanged a long, contemplative stare.

"We don't have time for this," I snapped as they wordlessly debated their options, and calculated my worth to their mission. "We need to disappear. If you need me to help you get that fucking book, then let us out, or get the hell out of here and I'll get out of here myself."

Somehow.

They turned their backs on me, much like they had in the motel in Florida, and leaned close to privatize their discussion.

"We don't need him," Sam insisted. "We've gone up against Crowley before. This isn't anything we can't handle ourselves."

"Of course we can handle it," Dean agreed. "But Crowley is expecting us. He's not expecting a fucking demon hunter. Hunter demon?"

"Guys," I called above their hushed but still quite audible voices. "Seriously. Tick-tock."

They turned to face me again. Sam's face was rigid, his fingers still tightened around the hilt of his Kurdish blade as Dean gradually crouched down and used his long, silver angel blade to scratch away enough of the trap to break the seal.

I stepped free and brushed past Sam, flicking the smoldering stub of my cigarette to the ground with a reserved motion. He scornfully watched as I lit myself another cigarette, still clutching his demon blade in a silent protest to Dean's decision to keep me around. I pitched him a cocky smirk and said;

"Shotgun."


	9. Mystery

The world was dark in the early morning light under a thick blanket of menacing gray clouds. I could feel the moisture building in the air beyond the glass and steel of the Impala. The scent of the looming wetness cut through the dry heat, and a faint roll of thunder growled in the distance.

The world outside looked like how I felt on the inside. It was dark and foreboding, and it was building up to something terrible and unstoppable. Only, the storm outside would quench the parched earth, and eventually recede and give way to the sun and all would be happy and warm again. The storm inside of me would only satisfy the demon, the part of me I had been trying to keep at bay, and God only knew if I could recover from that.

I debated telling them who I was. I considered pulling my mask back and announcing my true identity to my sons before they sent me on another suicide mission. Before the tempest swept in and took away every last shred of John Winchester that I desperately clung to, and I really became the thing I despised. But I decided it was best to keep them in the dark, keep them blissfully unaware of what had become of their old man. Besides, they wouldn't believe me.

"Well, that's weird," Sam muttered out loud, shattering the thick silence that had been made uncomfortable by my very presence. He was sitting in the front passenger seat, despite my claim to the seat (although I never actually thought I would be welcome in the coveted spot), with his black laptop open and carefully balanced on his knees.

"What's weird?" I asked with a note of contempt, keeping my eyes on the dark gloomy skies and the rusty earth. "How you have the fucking internet right now?"

Sam responded by pretending he didn't hear me, although the way his eyes narrowed, I could tell he had.

"Please don't tell me there's not an asylum in Traverse," Dean pleaded from his place behind the steering wheel. He took his eyes off the two-lane highway he was navigating to shoot Sam a disgruntled look.

"There is an old asylum," Sam said. "It was established in 1881, and shut down in 1989."

"Great," Dean said. "Sounds exactly like the kind of place Crowley would hole up. So what's weird?"

"The fact that it's not abandoned," Sam revealed.

"What?" Dean asked with a sharp look of confusion. I sat straighter in my seat and leaned forward in interest.

"Yeah," Sam nodded, his eyes still glued to the screen. "The Traverse City State Hospital actually has multiple buildings on site, and they've been slowly under restoration since about 2001. It looks like a lot of them are occupied."

"Occupied by what?" Dean asked, more confused than before.

Sam clicked his mouse and sat back, his eyes slightly widened.

"The buildings are used for residential and business purposes," he read from his computer screen. "Apartments and condos, restaurants, boutiques, coffee shops, a freaking winery, offices, a yoga studio–"

"I get it," Dean cut him off. "So what you're saying is that it's crowded."

"Yeah," Sam nodded.

"That doesn't seem like the kind of place Crowley would hang out," Dean said, looking between Sam and the road. "Which is why that is exactly where he is."

"The only problem is figuring out what part of the property he's hanging out in," Sam said as his fingers stroked the black keyboard.

"Check out the businesses," I suggested. Sam craned his neck back and shot me a cold glower, wordlessly telling me he hadn't asked for my help. "Maybe he's operating out of a restaurant or something," I continued anyway. "It's a vacation town, right? Get the tourists drunk and full and complacent and offer them their wildest dream come true for desert."

Sam sighed and turned around to face the road.

"You know, that's not a bad idea," Dean casually said. "Check out the winery, dude. I bet they get tons of people wasted."

Sam fixed his gaze on the computer once more and began typing.

"How'd you know it's a vacation town?" he casually asked without looking up from his task.

I paused to contemplate my response. Northern Michigan was a common vacation destination for folks in Illinois. I had never gone myself, but most of my childhood neighbors and friends would visit for weeks at a time in the summer, and the names of the cities and towns had been burned into my mind.

Of course, I didn't want to clue them in to my home state or past human history, so I didn't mention this. And so I replied with;

"How did you _not_ know it's a vacation town?"

Sam ignored me, and instead stared thoughtfully at the screen in front of him. His brows folded in curiosity and a light "huh" emitted from his lips.

"What?" Dean asked impatiently as he picked up a paper coffee cup from the cup holder and carefully took a slow sip.

"Nothing," Sam shook his head. "I mean, at first glance, none of these places scream Crowley. But there is a business called — get this – GLASS Paranormal and Ghost Removal."

Dean choked and sputtered on his coffee as a hearty chuckle rolled up from his chest.

"Are you shitting me?" he asked with amusement, swiping away the coffee that dribbled down his chin with the back of his hand.

"I am not," Sam said. He clicked the mouse a couple of times and a tiny, amused grin tugged at the corner of his mouth. "Their web page is pretty bare. It says." He paused and tried to stifle a snicker. "Got ghosts? Call Miss. Torie."

"Miss. Torie?" Dean echoed questioningly before he got the joke and he rolled his eyes. "Mystery."

"Yep," Sam said, still mildly entertained.

"I don't think Crowley's hanging out with a ghost chaser named 'Mystery'," Dean said.

"No," Sam agreed with a nod. "But if anything weird is going on, I bet she would notice."

"Please," I scoffed, rolling my eyes. "Paranormal investigators wouldn't notice 'paranormal' if it bit them on the ass."

Sam ignored my bitter comment and shifted in his seat, careful to keep his laptop level as he fished his smartphone out of his jeans pocket. He dialed the number listed on the webpage, and turned the speaker on. He held the slender, black device between Dean and himself, and we quietly listened and waited for "Miss. Torie" to pick up.

"Hello?" A feminine voice filled the Impala.

"Uh, hi," Sam spoke up. "Is this GLASS Paranormal?"

"Yeah," the voice said. "What's up?"

"I have a question for you, and it might sound a little odd."

"I'm sure it will, honey," the voice said in a tone that bordered on sarcasm, though not in an unfriendly way.

"Um, right." Sam paused to glance back down at his computer. "Your office is located at the Traverse City State Hospital, right?"

"Yeah. I mean, it's technically called The Village or something now, but yeah."

"Have you noticed anything… unusual there recently? Like, flickering lights?"

"Uh, yeah dude," the woman's voice returned, as if it should have been obvious. "That's kind of what happens in haunted buildings."

Sam and Dean exchanged a look of curious beguilement.

"What about odd smells?" Sam prodded as thunder grumbled in the distance. "Like, rotten eggs or sulfur?"

The line went silent, and, after a few seconds, the phone beeped to indicate the call had been disconnected.

"Well that's not suspicious," Dean said sarcastically as Sam redialed the number. It took him a couple of tries before the woman would answer her phone again.

"Quit calling here," she said shortly, and swiftly hung up.

Sam sighed, but remained persistent and tried again.

"I fucking mean it," she snapped when she answered. "Tell Crowley I passed his idiotic test and leave me the fuck alone."

"Hold on a second!" Sam quickly called, hoping to keep her on the line. "I don't work for Crowley."

"You don't?"

"No. My name's Sam. I'm a hunter—"

"A hunter?" The woman's voice cut him off. "Well, that's just fucking great." There came a long pause and Sam had to check his phone to make sure he was still connected. "Look, pal," the voice said at last, her words laced with a sorrowful irritation. "If you don't leave me alone, you're gonna get me killed. I'm hanging up, and I'm blocking your number. Do not call me again."

Sam's phone beeped, and the three of us sat with baffled expression in the Impala half a country away.

"What the hell was that?" Dean asked no one in particular. "What did she mean by that?"

"I don't know," Sam said, just as bewildered as Dean. "But I'm starting to think she's not the typical paranormal investigator."

"You think she's in trouble?" Dean asked.

"I don't know," Sam admitted, but the concern that gently laced itself across his face said he suspected something similar. "But it sounds like we're headed in the right direction."

\- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

"This place is creepy."

Dean stared up at the giant, four story Victorian building with an unsettled look. The nobel asylum was elegant and clean, and far less eerie than any of the former institutions I had ever run across. The off-white bricks wore a fresh coat of paint, and the black, peaked roofs had been re-shingled. All the windows were not only intact, but extraordinarily clean, so clean they reflected perfectly the deep blue skies and the fluffy white clouds that lazily sailed across them. Illustrious old oak trees stood proudly alongside strong maples in a cluster on the front lawn, and, on the other side of the small, gravel parking lot, sat an open field of lush green grass.

We stood at a fork in the narrow road that led up to the former asylum, studying the long building we had to infiltrate. Dean had parked the Impala a mile or so away on a shady residential street, and we had walked to the place the sign called The Village at Grand Traverse Commons. If Crowley was there — and we were certain he was — the car would have tipped him off in an instant. And if the Impala didn't alert them of my boys, the hellhound sitting in the back seat would have alerted them of me.

"This is actually the least creepy asylum I've seen," Sam said, challenging his brother's statement as his eyes swept over the historical landmark.

"I mean, it _looks_ nice," Dean added, squinting up at the four-story building. "But it still has that old, crazy feel to it. And people live here?" He paused and glanced over to Sam. "How much you wanna bet it's haunted?"

"Considering 'Mystery' already told us it is, I wouldn't bet against it."

I lit myself a cigarette and inhaled the poisonous smoke with a desperate breath. It had been a long couple of days stuck in the backseat of the Impala, and Sam's reserved hostility hadn't helped. It was relieving to finally be out of the car, and at the right destination. My part in the grimoire affair was coming to an end, and, soon, I would get to return to hunting things that wouldn't try to drag me back to Hell.

As soothing as it was to know my work with my sons was about to come to an end, it was also deeply disappointing. I hadn't truly understood how much I missed them until I had begun traveling with them, even under the circumstances. I may have abandoned my mission for penance when the revelation of what the angels had done to me came to light, but I knew I couldn't stay with them. Even if they did know who I was – or, rather, used to be – they wouldn't want me hanging out with them. I was, after all, a demon.

I tried to shake the regret that grew like a weed in my gut. I couldn't afford to get distracted again. Not here, not with Crowley so close.

"According to the website," Sam began with his gaze between the grand building and his phone. "Mystery's office is in Building 50. Which should be this building here."

He pointed straight ahead at the building we had been eyeing.

"How many buildings are there?" Dean asked.

"There should be four more former patient wards behind here," Sam said, idly motioning towards Building 50. "A couple of them are still completely abandoned. Well. Un-renovated."

"Let's go check 'em out," Dean said. He began strolling across the street, motioning for Sam to follow. "Maddox, you take Building 50. Find out what Mystery knows, and see if she's in trouble."

"Yes, I heard the plan the first time," I called as I walked directly towards the building while Sam and Dean took the sidewalk around.

"This time," Sam scoffed loud enough for me to hear. I sighed in embarrassment and hung my head as I lumbered to the set of simple glass doors that seemed tiny and out of place on such a grand and polished structure.

The inside of Building 50 was tidy and clean, and smelled faintly of lavender and garlic. The walls were mostly old, well-tended red brick which proudly displayed paintings of landscapes and waterscapes that danced under a pleasantly dim light. A half-flight of stairs directly in front of me led down to a row of boutiques, shops and restaurants, while another short staircase ascended to the second floor just to my left. I took the stairs up and wandered down the wide, naturally lit corridor past rows of offices until I found another staircase and I took it to the third floor.

I wandered this corridor a little slower than I had the first, carefully reading numbers and names painted on the frosted glass windows of each door I passed. A vague scent of sulfur found my nose as I neared the center of the wide hall; I was getting close.

I stopped short at the door marked "G.L.A.S.S. Paranormal & Ghost Removal" in bold, black sticker letters, half of which were curling and fraying at the edges. The window was too thick and too frosted to tell if anyone was inside, but when I knocked an annoyed voice responded with a short "what?" and I let myself in.

The office was small, smaller than an average hotel room, and cramped. An overstuffed black leather couch sat along the brick wall on the left, facing a closet door on the right wall. On one side of the couch sat a weathered, antique table, and on the other a black mini-fridge that supported a white microwave and a small, black coffee maker. Two decent sized speakers sat on either side of a cheap, pinewood desk that had been placed in front of the tall, narrow window along the far wall, set so the woman sitting behind it was facing the door.

The woman Sam and Dean had been calling Mystery peered up from a silver laptop with giant, round eyes the same color as the sky. They were outlined in heavy black makeup that made her lashes stand out and made her eyes look electric and intense. Her vibrant, aquamarine hair was pin straight and long, falling just past her chest, with her bangs combed flat over her forehead. She wore a solid black tank top that displayed a collection of colorful ink embedded forever along her arms; the left arm was covered in what looked like a page straight from a comic book with panels and word bubbles, while the right was covered in stars in a multitude of sizes, arranged to give the appearance that they were falling from her shoulder to be caught in a pile at her wrist. Another tattoo had been drawn across the left side of her chest over her heart, something that looked like a name laced within the symbol for infinity, but her top covered it just enough to make it unreadable.

She was small, but her exterior was tough and, had I not been an ex-marine/hunter/demon, I might have found her intimidating. As I examined her round face, I realized she was actually kind of pretty. At least, she would be were it not for her wildly colored hair and extensive tattoos.

A sly smile spread across her full, pink lips as she watched me enter the tiny office space, and she quickly pulled her laptop to a close to give me her full attention.

"Well hello, Steve Rogers," she said with a suggestive tone, her eyes sweeping over me with interest.

"Um, my name is Maddox," I awkwardly corrected her.

The smile on Mystery's face widened into a look of amusement.

"You mean you're not Captain America?" she said sarcastically.

"I'm afraid not," I shook my head. "I only made it to corporal."

Her smile widened even still, seemingly delighted by our casual banter.

"Please, come in," she motioned for me to step forward. "Shut the door, would you?"

I did as she requested, quietly latching the door closed before I strolled towards her.

"What can I do for you, Maddox?" she asked with a sweet voice that clashed with her rough-and-tough style.

"Actually, I was wondering if there was anything I might be able to do for you," I told her as I took a seat in the unstable wooden chair that sat across the desk from her.

"Oh?" she asked, pleasantly intrigued. She flashed me a seductive smile as she leaned forward slightly to expose her cleavage to me. "I bet I can think of something."

"That's… not quite what I had in mind," I admitted, taken somewhat aback by her brazen flirtations.

"No?" she asked with an exaggerated pout. "That's good." She dropped her tone and said in a voice barely above a whisper, "Because that's not exactly what I had in mind, either."

Before I could blink or have time to consider what she could have possibly meant, she was steadily aiming a sawed-off shotgun at my chest with her right hand.

"I was thinking you get the fuck out or I'll pump you so full of salt you'll be able to taste it in every meat suit you jump into."


	10. More Mystery and a Massacre

A cold and fierce expression settled across Mystery's brow as she aimed her weapon at me with an unwavering hand. I debated lying, telling her she was mistaken and that I wasn't a demon, but, judging by the fiery guise she expertly wore, lying would likely result in me getting shot. So I gave her a tiny smile and softly sighed.

"How'd you know?"

"You're wearing a jacket, dude," she pointed out my attire. "It's ninety fucking degrees outside."

"Nice observation," I gave her a sincere compliment as I warily eyed her gun.

"Get out," she said, moving her finger threateningly along the trigger. "And tell Crowley if he sends one more fucking demon down here, I'll assume he's broken our deal and I'm calling every hunter I know."

"I'll leave," I calmly assured her. "But before I do, you should know that I don't work for Crowley."

Mystery arched a brow as a roguish smile twitched at the right corner of her mouth. She pointed the shotgun away from me and discharged a single round that splattered the brick wall to my left in a spray of salt and flecks of red stone.

"You missed," I casually observed as she dramatically pumped the fore-end on her shotgun and returned its aim on me.

"Did I?" she said. She straightened her posture and gave me a confident smirk. At first I thought it had been a warning shot, a hostile way of telling me she didn't believe me. I thought this as I waited for her to say something, until a set of footsteps echoed down the hall and stopped short just outside the door behind me.

"Everything okay in there, mon amour?" a deep, French-accented voice rolled into the room. Mystery fixed her eyes on me so intensely, for a moment I couldn't tell what intimidated me more; the salt-loaded shotgun aimed at my chest or her. And then I realized what was going on; the voice beyond the door belonged to a demon.

My muscles tensed and my breath halted. I clenched my fingers into fists as I fought against instinct, screamed at myself not to reach for my Kurdish blade. Revealing that I was armed would, at best, get me shot, and at worst, it would get me shot and hauled off to Crowley.

"Fucking ghosts, Damien," Mystery barked a convincing lie, her irritated voice clashing with the pleased look that had settled on her face. "It's always fucking ghosts."

"Do you need help, ma chère?" Damien's voice called, and Mystery cringed at the notes of affection.

"No, Damien, the ghost hunter does not need help with a ghost," she called, never taking her eyes off of me. "Although, since you're here, does the name 'Maddox' mean anything to you?"

"Ahh... no, I cannot say it does," the voice said. "Why do you ask? Are you sure you do not need assistance?"

Mystery eyed me questioningly, wordlessly asking whether or not she should invite the demon inside. My jaw tightened and I slowly shook my head, silently begging her not to tell Damien I was there.

"Just wondering," Mystery called. "You can fuck off now."

"Are you sure?" Damien asked.

"I mean, I do have another round loaded up, so if you were planning on shitting margaritas later, by all means, come inside."

A long and horrible silence passed, and, for a minute, I thought Damien might actually let himself in. Not that I wouldn't be able to take him. But taking down Damien would make a lot of noise, and I would be forced to improvise my way to the grimoire and, inevitably, be seen by Crowley.

"I think that I will come back later," Damien decided at last and shuffled back down the hall. The tension in my muscles eased, and a long, inaudible breath of relief passed through my lips.

"You'd better fucking not!" Mystery yelled before letting loose a low, frustrated growl.

"Boyfriend?" I teased, and she shot me an icy glower.

"He wishes," she said as her face curved into a look of disgust. "So." Her posture relaxed, but she kept her weapon level with my chest. "You don't work for Crowley. Tell me, Maddox, why are you here?"

"I'm a hunter," I informed her, something that provoked her to raise a brow. "And I'm here to help you." I paused and glanced to the gun. "I think."

"How are you a hunter?" Mystery shot another question. "And why do you think I'm in trouble?" She paused as a light switched on behind her eyes and an annoyed realization formed across her face. "You've got to be shitting me," she said in a half whisper. "You work with that Sam guy, don't you?"

"It's… complicated," I said. "But yes, Sam sent me here to see if you were okay."

"And to debrief me, right?" she guessed, narrowing her eyes at me as she spoke. "You want me to tell you all about Crowley and where to find him."

I gave her a thin smile.

"It would save me some time."

"Well, friendo, you're out of luck," she said with a false sorrow behind her breath. "Because I'm not in trouble, and I'm not telling you shit. The deal I have with Crowley is I keep quiet about his operation, and he leaves me alone. So if you want to rescue me, for the love of fuck, get out before you get me killed."

I sighed.

"Believe me, I'd like to," I told her. "Unfortunately, I can't leave until I've retrieved something."

"Can't or won't?" Mystery challenged.

"Can't."

Mystery quietly considered what I had told her, and her expression relaxed into something slightly less bitter as she casually leaned back in her chair.

"Why can't you?" she wanted to know. "And don't give me the 'it's complicated' bullshit."

"Crowley doesn't know I'm topside," I gave her the vague and abridged version of my story. "My… friends threatened to tell Crowley if I don't help them get something he has."

"So they sent you into Crowley's lair?" Mystery scoffed, her expression somewhere between disbelief and boredom. "Some awesome friends you have." She paused. "Why even bother?"

"Why even bother with what?"

"I mean, you're pretty fucked either way, right?" she said with a shrug. "Why bother getting close to Crowley? Why not get the fuck outta dodge and hole up somewhere before your 'friends' tip him off?"

"I've run from a lot of things in my time," I admitted. "But a fight ain't one of them. This way, I've at least got a small chance of walking away somewhat unnoticed. Besides, it's for a." I paused and nearly choked on the words that pained me to say. "Good cause," I finished through clenched teeth.

Mystery pondered this for a moment as she adjusted her grip on her gun.

"What kind of 'good cause'?" she wanted to know.

"It's for the angels," I explained without enthusiasm, unsuccessfully keeping the disdain from rising to my voice. Mystery gently lifted her brows in bewilderment as she quietly considered what I had told her. She studied the sincerity in my demeanor and let loose a long sigh when she determined I was telling the truth.

"In that case, I'm fucked either way too, aren't I?" she said with a sarcastic smile. She shifted uncomfortably in her seat, visibly unsettled by the situation she had been sucked into simply by being in the wrong place at the wrong time. To a certain degree, I could empathize with her, and I offered her an encouraging smile.

"Listen," I spoke empathetically. "You tell me what I need to know, I'll keep you safe."

Mystery scowled in what appeared to be distrust.

"I promise," I solemnly vowed. It surprised me, the kind sincerity and protection I offered her. It was the kind of thing old me used to say to people, the kind of thing old me used to do. And it was nice to see that ray of light in the unfolding darkness. It was nice to know I wasn't a total monster.

Yet.

"Yeah, I doubt that," she grumbled in disbelief as she placed her gun on the desk, but kept her hand securely on the stock. "Despite what I know about demons and the fact that every instinct in my body is screaming at me to shoot you in the face…" Mystery paused and let out a heavy sigh. "I guess I'll help you. Seeing as how it's for good, and I'm already fucked, thank you very much."

I gave her an appreciative smile she returned with another frown.

"I'm looking for a grimoire," I said, prompting a look of recognition to flash across her face.

"Gnarly looking leather book?" she half asked, half stated. "Weird symbol burned on the cover?"

"You've seen it?" I asked, and she nodded.

"It was on Crowley's desk," she replied. "Up on the fourth floor. I don't think I was supposed to see it. He got a little weirded out about it and tried to cover it up with a handkerchief. Of course, this was a few weeks ago. Whether or not it's still there is anyone's guess."

"Crowley's keeping it close to him," I said. "As long as he's here, so's the grimoire."

"Well, he's not here all the time," Mystery said.

"Good," I said. "I just need the book, and I'd prefer if Crowley didn't see me take it."

Mystery's head tilted upwards suddenly as her eyes darted to the ceiling and her expression turned thoughtful.

"That could work," she muttered distractedly to herself.

"What?" I felt forced to ask when she didn't elaborate.

"Crowley usually takes off for a while after eleven," she stated. "I could give you my key to the building. Come back around 11:30. I'll blast some music so the other demons don't hear you coming."

"I would appreciate that," I told her. "But I think you'd be safer elsewhere."

"If I'm shooting my agreement with Crowley to hell, I might as well help as much as I can," Mystery said with a calm defensiveness. "Anyway, I'm usually here blasting music around then. It would probably seem more suspicious if I wasn't here blaring rock and roll."

"Fair enough," I replied.

With her left hand she pulled the top drawer of her desk open and extracted a heavy brass key. She hesitantly leaned forward to pass it to me, but stopped short before I could take it from her.

"You'd better not be fucking with me," she warned, jabbing a finger at me. "Because if you are, and you get me killed, I will haunt the fuck out of you."

"That's not how that works," I informed her something I was confidant she already knew.

"Yeah, we'll fucking see."

\- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

I returned later that night with Freya and, thanks to Mystery, a good idea of what to expect. The outside of the building was lit in a faint yellow glow that contrasted with the darkness inside and intensified the eerie feel the place retained. Deep shadows cut through the white light of the nearly full moon that hung in the sky over head, carving a path for Freya and me to slink through unnoticed. I should have been at least a little nervous, sneaking around the building that housed around two dozen demons, including their king. I should have felt some kind of fear to a certain degree. But I didn't. I was calm. Too calm.

The calm before the storm.

Then again, perhaps I did feel a bit of fear. I wouldn't have told Sam and Dean to hang back if I was completely lacking in it. Only, I couldn't tell if I was trying to protect them from the twenty-something demons that lurked inside, or if I was trying to shield them from what I knew I was about to do. Even if they never found out who I was, they didn't need to see the thing I tried to pretend I wasn't.

I wondered, as I quietly unlocked the back door and slipped inside the building behind Freya, if killing a few dozen demons would quench my thirst for revenge, or if it would only fuel it. Would it put me at ease, or would it make me more of a demon? Was helping Sam and Dean obtain a stupid book worth the potential fallout?

 _They're demons,_ I reminded myself as my fingers wrapped themselves around the bone hilt of my Kurdish blade. _Killing demons is never a bad thing._

 _Killing people is,_ I mentally argued with myself, cautiously treading the dark and empty halls.

 _The people are probably already dead,_ I tried to make myself feel better about the sins I had yet to commit. _Sam and Dean need that book, and you need to keep your face hidden. There's no other way around it._

_I could just not kill them._

_That's not going to get you far._

I silently toed my way up the open staircase to the second floor. Freya walked beside me, her body rigid and crouched low to the ground, softly treading across the linoleum floors as quietly as possible. We tiptoed through patches of moonlight that spilled through giant windowpanes and past office doors until we reached the second set of stairs at the end of the hall.

My heart began to race as we gradually ascended the staircase to the third floor. It wasn't the slew of demons I knew were patrolling the wide hallway that caused my heart rate to spike. Rather, it was the adrenaline building in my veins and hammering against my chest. I wasn't just ready for a fight; I craved it.

_That's a bad, bad sign._

As planned, the loud sound of music cued up and flooded the third floor hallway with electric guitars and a fast beat — Iggy Pop's _Lust For Life_ – and a giddy, wolfish grin spread across my lips.

_Why are you smiling?_

_Because this next part's gonna be fun._

I shoved the guilt down as quickly as it arose. I didn't have time to dwell on the things I was about to do, or get philosophical about right versus wrong or how I felt. I had a book to grab and some chains to break.

I stepped boldly into the dim light of the third floor corridor, openly brandishing my blade in a flashy style. There were eight of them there in the hallway, each standing guard in a casual manner, all men wearing black suits and matching ties. Their eyes quickly found me and they stared with open mouths, flabbergasted by my unexpected presence. Shock and confusion filled their expressions as they looked between me, Freya, and my knife.

"Which one of you son's of bitches is gonna tell me where I can find that goddamn grimoire?" I asked with a loud growl and a savage smile. I could feel my eyes flash black, an act I couldn't stop, not even if I wanted to.

"Mon Dieu!" a dark haired demon said as his eyes grew wide, and I recognized his voice as Damien's. The way he pointed at me, it was if I were a ghost. "I know who you are!"

"Do you?" I asked with an air that teetered on the edge of amusement. "You know what that means?"

Damien shook his head and the others watched with unease as I took a tenacious step forward.

"It means you're first." I paused to watch the demons spin around and glance between each other with looks of wild uncertainty. I had clearly surprised them, just as Dean was confident I would. I could feel a savage grin pull at my lips and I yelled a simple command;

"Get 'em, girl!"

Freya tore off down the hall, straight for the demon closest to us. I watched her pounce upon the brown haired demon, who let out a horrible shriek as she took him down and sunk her teeth into his neck.

 _"Here comes Johnny Yen again,"_ the lyrics belted as I marched forward with an unwavering confidence and a hot rush, the kind of rush a junkie might get before scoring a much needed fix. I directed my gaze on Damien, who was still so shocked he did little to fight against me as I drove my blade into his chest. The orange light exploded within him and I swiftly removed my blade from his flesh before he could crumple to the ground. I swirled around to see the six remaining demons had found their courage, and were advancing upon me with a bold fury. Freya leapt away from the first demon she had taken down, and charged at two more, successfully taking them both down in a heap of flailing limbs and gnashing teeth. I fought the other four alone, easily ducking fists and blocking kicks. The song was barely half over by the time I'd slain all four of them, and my attention turned to the demons that lay quivering in agony on the floor.

"Now," I spoke above the music as I looked between them. "Which one of you ate up mother fuckers is going to tell me where I can find that goddamn grimoire?"

At first they said nothing as the music reverberated against the walls and pulsed against their skulls.

"Upstairs," croaked the brown haired demon, the demon Freya had taken down first. He was sprawled out in a pool of his own blood, writhing in a pain so intense he couldn't focus on smoking out. "Crowley has it upstairs on a bookshelf," he sputtered through a mouthful of blood.

The other demons — two twenty-somethings with dark blond hair, propped in a slouching position against the brick wall — shot him a dirty look and hissed in disapproval.

"Fuck you," the brown haired demon spat. "I'm not dying for this bullshit."

"Thank you," I said as I inched towards him. I crouched down beside him, and sunk the Kurdish blade into his stomach. "But I didn't say I was going to spare you," I whispered, watching with a sense of satisfaction as the light within him flickered and faded away.

A horrible sound emitted from behind me, resonating like a hundred souls screaming into a violent gale. I twisted my head around in time to watch the thick black smoke as it fled the blond men they had been possessing. I stood abruptly, clutching my weapon as Freya snapped up at the smoky mess, but there was nothing we could do. They were gone, off to find new bodies. Whether or not they would return, I didn't know, but I was foolishly confident they wouldn't be able to find bodies close enough to Crowley to tell him I was there. I was also confident they had not recognized me, but not enough to prevent me from cursing my luck that they had gotten away.

What happened next came in a blur, like a red dream in fast forward. And, like a dream, I don't remember much of what happened. I recalled Iggy Pop gradually fading and another upbeat, punk rock song that cued up as I met a large group of demons guarding the stairwell that led up to the fourth floor. I would like to think the distortion in memory can be blamed on the surge of adrenaline that washed throughout my very being, but I know, deep down, it wasn't that. It was a blind rage, a rabid hunger for the carnage I delighted myself in. The carnage that got me drunker with each drop of blood I spilled until I blacked out.

Fucking demons.

I do remember vaguely the gist of what I had done. I had made my way through the demons on the stairs, and a few more at the door marked Crossroads Agency in fine gold and black lettering. I cleared out the vast and elegant but eerie office suite, and Freya chased the few who fled down the hall.

Everything came back into focus when I found the grimoire. Just as the brown haired demon had promised, the old leather-bound spellbook was tucked between a collection of ancient books in a wide, black bookcase that stood behind a lavish, black oak desk. It was easy to spot, even in the dim candlelight that faintly illuminated the room. It's spine was weathered terribly, it's pages deeply yellowed. When I pulled it free from its neat little place between two green-covered books, I studied the cover to see that it bore the archaic symbol – a triangular shape that overlapped with something that could have possibly been a crescent sun and an arrow. A deep breath of relief prematurely worked its way from my lungs and out my lips.

And then I turned around.

A man with dark hair and matching eyes stood with a daunting air in the shadows between a pair of brick columns. His posture was straight and proud, his black suit sharp and immaculate. He wore a tiny, insincere smile as his eyes narrowed slightly, and a disappointed but entertained expression creased across his forehead.

"You," he spoke as he eyed me with interest. "Are not who I was expecting."

I warily stared at him through narrowed eyes and my grip on the bloodied blade I held in my right hand tightened. I clutched the grimoire with my left, forgetting it was no longer important to me. Not now that Crowley had seen me.

"I was expecting the Winchesters, but this…" He trailed off momentarily, his eyes locked on me, the real me, the thing that was piloting Max's skeleton. The right corner of his lip curved in an insincere half smile. "This is quite a surprise." He squinted, searching for a hint of recollection in my true face. "I don't know you. How do I not know you?" He paused and he stared into me, ravenously trying to put a name to my blackened, smoky face. "Then again, you do look familiar, don't you? Not from Hell. No. Someplace else. But where, and when?"

I didn't respond, and I didn't move. I stood frozen before Crowley, praying to the god that had long since forsaken me that he wouldn't recognize my face. And just when I felt myself relax, just when I thought my true identity was safe, a spark of recognition flashed across Crowley's eyes. His lips curved into a wide, nefarious smile.

"Well, well," he said with a note of heinous delight. "If it isn't John Winchester."


	11. Demon Trapped

Crowley did a decent job of pretending I hadn't rendered him speechless, but the truth was that I had. I could see the gears in his mind turning behind his eyes, searching for the right thing to say. Something smug, something suave and offensive.

"How the mighty have fallen," he said at last, and he took a single step out of the shadows. "Literally," he added with a roguish smirk. "And becoming a demon all on your own." He gave a dramatic pause for effect. "I've seen a lot of demons born out of torture, but never one that came from self-torment. That must have taken some time."

I remained silent as I shot him a glare. For a few seconds, I contemplated hurling my knife at him, but that wouldn't work. He would teleport away before the blade could find him, and I would be disarmed for long enough to give Crowley a good shot at killing me, or worse; capturing me.

_Where the hell are you, Freya?_

"Tell me, John," the demon king went on. "How did you manage to elude the legions of Hell?"

"Wasn't that hard," I growled, underplaying my ordeal.

Crowley raised a brow in disbelief.

"How, pray tell, did you manage to escape?" he wanted to know, but I didn't reply. Realization struck him and he nodded knowingly. "Ah," he said, as if I had supplied him with an answer. "Bram. I was wondering where he had gone off to. I presume you were also responsible for Desdemona and Cyrus?"

I stared at him through narrowed eyes and clenched my jaw as my fingers tightened around the hilt of my knife. A shrewd smirk found its way across Crowley's lips as he eyed my weapon with amusement. He opened his suit jacket to unsheathe the long, silver blade — an angel's blade — stored in an inner pocket. He held it up for me to see, boastfully eyeing its sharp edges.

"Mine's bigger," he said, almost playfully. He pointed it at me in a manner more casual than it was threatening, despite the blaze of fury that burned behind his eyes when he looked at me. "The things I'm going to do to you."

"You want me?" I boldly challenged. I lifted my blade and stood ready for a fight. "Come and get me."

Crowley flashed me a devilish grin and took a slow, fearless step towards me. His demeanor was relaxed and casual, too casual for someone who had just been challenged to a fight. His suspiciously calm disposition alone was enough to send a shiver trailing down my spine, but his smile was mischievous. It was delighted and nasty, and telling of the complex web I had unwittingly walked into.

"It seems I already have you," he smugly informed me. His gaze turned down to the book still clutched in my left hand. I quickly dropped it and, the instant the book left my hand, a hot pain scorched my forearm. I tugged desperately at my jacket sleeve, pulling it up in time to see an intricate, Norse-looking symbol burn itself into my flesh. My heart stopped when understanding found me.

"The grimoire was a setup," I said in a low gasp, more to myself than to Crowley.

"Very good," the demon king mockingly praised as he continued to take dramatic steps forward.

"There is no real grimoire, is there?" I asked, glancing back up to him.

"That is _technically_ a grimoire," he said. "A worthless book of harmless spells any simpleton with an herb garden could cast. The spell your wayward sons are searching for does not, to my knowledge, exist, and if it does, it bloody well isn't in any grimoire." He paused when he reached the black oak desk, the only thing that separated him from me. "That was intended for Sam and/or Dean. Preferably Sam. I still rather like Dean."

It was difficult to conceal the dread that gripped me tight as I stared wide-eyed at the king.

"Why?" I wanted to know, my voice barely above a whisper. "What does this do?"

"That," Crowley said, proudly eyeing the mark burned on my arm. "Binds you to me. Anything that happens to me, happens to you. For example."

He held up his angel blade with his left hand and raised it to his right palm. He gradually pushed the blade's tip into his flesh and, as he did this, a white hot pain seared beneath my own palm. I lost my grip on my knife, and it clattered noisily to the floor. My skin was broken, bleeding in the center of my hand, and it burned like acid in my veins. Crowley grinned, seemingly pleased by the pain he had inflicted upon me — and himself — as he pulled the blade from his hand.

"And before you ask, no, this is not a two-way street," he said. "Whatever happens to you won't effect me in the slightest. I'm not a moron."

"Why are you doing this?" I asked through gritted teeth. I rubbed the spot on my palm with my thumb, attempting to massage away the residual pain. "What are you planning?"

"Yes, why don't I just indulge you on my evil plot, then," he said sarcastically. "Not that it would matter. You'll be coming with me."

He didn't give me a chance to respond, or spit curses and foolhardy remarks. The demon king vanished before my eyes and, a split second later, I could feel him standing behind me. Mostly, I could feel the tip of his angel blade pressed threateningly against my back.

"We'll make a proper demon of you yet," he told me. I could hear the nasty smile he wore as he spoke with a pompous indignation. "So much potential for you, John. You will be a great asset to my army. You just need to be a little. More." He pushed the tip of his blade into my back, just enough to pierce the flesh and sent a wave of that hot, burning pain surging under my skin. "Broken."

"I'll never be one of you," I spoke between clenched teeth and a pain-laced grimace.

"Oh, John," Crowley said with a false sorrow. "Judging by the mess you left in the hallway." He paused to lean into me and whispered, "You already are."

I whirled around with a determined fury and made a swift, precise grab for the special blade in Crowley's grasp, but he vanished before I could reach it. I bent down to scoop up my own weapon, and when I stood upright I came face-to-face with the demon king.

"And just what do you think you're going to do with that?" he wanted to know, his tone completely lacking concern as he gave my knife a dismissive look.

"I'm going to shove it in your chest," I spat.

"Don't be daft," Crowley rolled his eyes. "Not only is that little pig-sticker of yours not going to kill me, you'd only be hurting yourself."

"You seem to forget that I'm a Winchester," I viciously growled.

Crowley's smug expression gradually fell as he realized what this meant. I couldn't kill him without killing myself, but it wasn't something I would hesitate to do, not for one second. And though he may have had the upper hand with his angel blade and the extraordinary powers that had been bestowed upon him with his high rank, he knew I would gladly fight him and, judging by the cold expression that had woven its way across his brow, he wasn't confident he could win. I may have been a lowly demon, but I was still enough of a Winchester to kick his ass.

"This is far from over," he told me warningly. "I will drag you back to Hell, and I will go through Sam and Dean if I have to."

"Leave them alone." I tried to sound bold and loud, but the words came out in a stunned whisper. "They don't know who I am."

"Well, then," he said, amusement flickering across his face. "It will be genuine surprise when I kill them to get to you, won't it?"

Crowley was not threatening me, or my boys. He was making a promise.

"Oh," he swiftly added. "By the way, the bitch downstairs? Miss. Torie," he said with an eye roll. "She's as good as dead. I assume the little tart helped you?"

I said nothing, but there must have been something in my eyes, something in my expression that confirmed his suspicions about her were correct. He gently raised his brows and tilted his head back in understanding. A faint smile tugged at the corners of his lips.

"I'll be seeing you soon, Johnny."

And with that, he vanished, leaving me with a racing anxiety and a curse. For a while, I stood stiff with shock and lament. I had grown too confident in my demonized state, too cocky. I had thought I was invincible, and it made me sloppy, left me open to dastardly deeds cooked up by annoyingly clever things like Crowley. Of course this was a trap, it was obvious now. And not only did Crowley now know that I was a demon, that I belonged to Hell, I was tied to him.

The muffled, bass heavy music that had been pulsing through the floor stopped abruptly, and left a haunting silence in its wake. The sudden and deafening stillness reminded me I was still standing there, motionless, numb with horror and rage. And it reminded me of the promise I had made to Mystery. But when I turned, intending on racing out the door and down the stairs, I was made aware of what I had done.

The way to the door was strewn with bodies sprawled across the tiled floor, lying motionless in gathering pools of blood. I counted nine of them as I slowly stepped over the stiff, lifeless husks with detachment, as if I had lost control of Max's body and was being forced to witness the bloodshed and mayhem I had created. The hallway beyond Crowley's office held another five bloodied bodies, as well as Freya, who cowered in fear in the corner. She anxiously sat up upon seeing me and, when she was certain Crowley was not behind me, joined me at my side.

A hollow feeling unfolded as I shuffled to the stairs and stared down; the brick walls were smeared with blood, bodies hung limply over the banister and slumped in awkward heaps on the steps. One body was sprawled backwards across the stairs, blood flowing from a deep wound in his neck where it trickled down the step into a thick puddle.

I shuffled amongst the massacre, paralyzed with shock. And then, quite suddenly, I wasn't on the stairwell. I wasn't even in the country. For a split second, I was standing under a hot, arid sun, amidst a thick cloud of dirt and dust. My ears were ringing, and my eyes stung as I squinted into the cloud and saw blood. And bodies. Soldiers and civilians, men and women. A child.

These images flashed across my mind, surfacing in horrible bits and pieces as I took in what I had done. The memory that wasn't mine flared across my mind, and my feet fumbled at the weight the vision carried. My head spun, my chest tightened and my throat felt like it was closing. I gasped for breath as my footing fumbled and slid on the slick, bloody floor, and I reached out for the wall to catch me.

I stood with one hand pressed against the red brick with my head bowed, and my fingers clutching at my blood-stained t-shirt that suddenly felt too tight. My stomach clenched and, as I started to gag on nothing, I realized what was happening; Max was awake. Not only was he awake, he was experiencing a flashback that had launched a full on panic attack. And I could feel it all.

I lurched forward when my stomach rolled, and I threw up. Had I not been so riddled with anxiety, or didn't feel like I was suffocating, I would have found it curious that I was even able to vomit. But at the time, it was difficult to focus on much of anything but the desperate beating of my heart.

I threw up again and gasped, sucking in a deep breath of air as my nerves gradually settled.

_Get out._

Thoughts that didn't belong to me whispered in my mind, and it didn't take me long to figure out it was Max.

_I changed my mind. Get out!_

"I'm sorry, Max," I muttered, wiping my mouth with my jacket sleeve. "But no."

_This isn't what I signed up for. Get out._

I pushed myself away from the wall and steadied myself on legs that felt as though they were made of rubber.

"They were just demons," I muttered, more to myself than to Max, and I shuffled down the third floor corridor.

_They were people, too,_ Max whispered.

"They were probably already dead," I argued, again trying to assure myself more than Max.

_You don't know that. I didn't say anything when you started hunting, because you were saving people. But this…_

"Saving people?" I echoed, and I stopped short. In the chaos realization of my actions and the surge of brutal anxiety, I had forgotten about Mystery. Adrenaline flooded my veins and I sprinted down the corridor until I reached her office. I threw the door open, rushed inside, and my heart sank.

The lights were on, and the tiny room was intact, but Mystery was nowhere to be found. I clenched my jaw as I glanced about the office, hoping to spot spot a clue or a sign, something that pointed me in Mystery's direction. But there was nothing.

_**She** wasn't a demon._

A weighted guilt grabbed at me as I stared at the vacant little space and I whispered, "what have I done?"


	12. John vs. The Winchesters

I sucked in a lungful of smoke as Freya and I hurried down an uneven dirt road riddled with sandy grooves and gravely potholes. My head darted from side to side, and my eyes glanced through trees and murky wetlands of tall grass and cattails, making certain I was alone on my route to Sam and Dean. With the exception of Max's panic attack, I hadn't been that petrified in years. Not since the night Mary died.

The night I first learned things like me were real.

Fear was not a lone sentiment I carried with me on that dark road. There was a tempest of fury and remorse brewing within the very core of my being. The demon side of me struggled against the small remains of humanity that had survived the fall, but the demon was growing bigger. Not only was it swelling in size, it was devouring the bits of humanity I desperately clung to.

_We're good, John,_ I assured myself as I took in another breath of smoke. _Things couldn't possibly get worse. Not tonight._

Of course, that was basically the equivalent of saying "the Titanic is unsinkable".

When I reached Sam and Dean, they were standing outside the Impala, which had been parked in the grass in the shadow of the burned remains of what was once a barn. Blackened planks of charred wood stood in crumbling rows, rooted in a fieldstone foundation that stood fast; singed, but strong. The scent of freshly burned wood carried across the light summer breeze, revealing the fire that had claimed the barn had been recent.

Dean was leaning casually against the trunk of the Impala, sipping from a silver flask, and Sam was staring up at the stars that peaked through the thin curtain of faint white light the small city gave off. They were conversing quietly, locked in a sobering discussion that came to an abrupt halt when they spied me approaching.

"Woah," Dean said, eyeing my blood-soaked t-shirt with a raised brow. "That better be demon blood."

"Of course it's demon blood," I hastily grumbled and I rolled my eyes. I drew in another breath of smoke before carelessly tossing the remains of my cigarette aside to smolder in the grass. "Get in the car. We need to go. Now."

Sam narrowed his eyes at me and folded his arms across his chest.

"No," he said firmly.

"It wasn't a question," I shot with an authoritative air. I briskly brushed past Sam and Dean, marched straight for the Impala, and threw the back door open. "Get in the car."

"Yeah, we don't take orders from demons," Dean spoke up. I turned to see he had planted himself firmly on the ground beside Sam, his face hardened by the command that had fallen out of my mouth without thought.

"Come with me if you want to live?" I wasn't trying to be funny, not by a long shot, but I didn't know how to rephrase my command to make myself sound less like General Dad.

"We're not going anywhere until you tell us what's going on," Sam said, firm in his decision to resist orders.

"I'll tell you on the way out of town," I hurriedly insisted. "Now let's go." I paused, and grudgingly added, "please?"

Sam stood fast in his place, waiting for me to share what had happened.

"You can start by telling us where the grimoire is," Dean said, taking his brother's side. His stance was not as rigid as his brother's, but he was far from relaxed. The way his fingers lightly twitched at his side, I knew he was prepared to unsheathe his angel blade at a moment's notice.

"You wanna know where the grimoire is?" I growled as I slowly stepped forward with narrowed eyes. "The grimoire was useless, and the spell you were after doesn't exist. It was all a trap that you two sent me walking into."

"A trap?" Dean echoed, and his face fell, not in sorrow for me and what had happened, but because of what this meant for his angel pal.

A frustrated breath steamrolled past my lips. I hastily pushed my left sleeve up to my elbow and extended my arm out. Sam and Dean both leaned forward to get a better view of the symbol.

"It's a curse," I informed them as they studied the mark that stretched across my flesh in red boxes and lines. "A binding spell. It ties me to Crowley. Whatever happens to him, happens to me."

"Wait, you saw Crowley?" Sam questioned, more curious than concerned, and his hazel eyes glanced up from my arm to me. "I thought Mystery told you he wouldn't be there."

"Yeah, well, he came home early," I muttered as I rolled my sleeve back down. "Mystery is gone, by the way. Crowley took her for helping me, and he's coming for you next. So, please, get in the fucking car."

"Why is he coming after us?" Sam wanted to know, his voice somewhere between curious and pissed off. "You're the one he wants, right? Now that he knows you're topside."

"Fuck if I know," I outright lied in my desperation to get on the road. "Can we please just go now?"

Sam and Dean exchanged a long, hard look, wordlessly debating their options.

"Are you two fucking deaf?" I growled when they remained silent. "Get in the fucking car!"

"Watch it," Dean sternly warned, jabbing a finger at me.

"Technically," Sam began. "You're no longer useful to us. Why should we help you?"

" _Why should you help me?_ " I echoed with a turbulent disbelief, and I marched up to Sam to get in his face. "I just took a bullet for you, boy," I snarled. "You owe me."

Sam narrowed his eyes at me, but his expression was was more studious than irate, like he was trying to dissect something I had said. Dean stepped between us and forcibly shoved me away from his brother. I staggered back only a couple of steps and I fought the instinctive urge to retaliate.

"Back off," Dean barked protectively in a gravely voice. "We don't owe you anything. If Crowley's coming after us to get to you, I think we're even. In fact, I think we should just exorcise you here and now. Send you on down as a gift to Crowley from us."

My breath caught in my throat and my heart stopped.

"You wouldn't," I challenged with a shaky confidence.

"Oh, I would," Dean said with an insincere smile. "Especially if it gets Crowley off our ass."

Dean gave me a stony look, and I could tell he wasn't lying.

"So that's how it is then?" I said, jilted by Dean's brazen threats. "You blackmail me, get me caught, and now you're just going to exorcise me?"

"Give me one good reason why I shouldn't," he challenged conceitedly.

Ice filled my veins. It hooked it's frigid fingers around my muscles and clung to my bones. Dean's words were cold, and left me frozen in place. Part of me screamed to tell them who I was; they wouldn't exorcise me if they knew it was their father they were threatening. But they wouldn't believe me. If anything, they would kill me for saying it.

"Crowley didn't know I was topside, because he didn't know I was in Hell," I confessed, hoping it was a satisfying enough excuse to keep Dean from sending me back. "If you exorcise me, I'll end up in the middle of it all and Crowley..." I paused, remembering what Desdemona and her partner had each said to me back in Vegas. A thin, insincere smile lifted at the corner of my lips. "He's never going to let me die."

"Why's that?" Sam asked, prodding me for more secrets. His brows gently folded and he nodded to me. "Who are you?"

"I'm the guy who managed to walk through Hell under Crowley's nose for a thousand years," I hotly snapped. "If you send me back now, he's going to personally torture me for the rest of eternity. Or worse, he's going to turn me into some goddamn raging death machine."

Sam parted his lips to speak, but no words came out. A perplexed look wove itself across his brow as he stared thoughtfully at me. He shifted in discomfort and, for a minute, he appeared to be holding his breath.

"That's impressive," Dean admitted with a look of interest. "That's actually really impressive. But it's not enough."

His hand hovered over his hip, preparing to arm himself as he shot me a cold but wary stare.

"Seriously?" I asked, somewhere between annoyed and horrified. "I thought you were team Maddox."

"I was," Dean acknowledged, advancing towards me. "And I sympathize with the soul selling, man. I do. But at the end of the day, you're just another demon."

The old saying, "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me"? I don't know about anyone else, but I've been bitten, clawed at, shot, maimed and shredded. I've suffered fractures and breaks and a century of being hacked to pieces every damn day. And no tooth or bullet or blade had ever sunk as deep or stung so bitterly as Dean's words. I tried to keep the pain from rising to the surface, tried to swallow it before he could notice. And he didn't. He boldly stepped within inches of my face and glared into my eyes, either trying to prove he wasn't afraid of me, or trying to provoke me into doing something, anything that would give him a better excuse to exorcise me. I should have seen the glint of hesitation that lingered behind his eye. I should have realized he didn't really want to exorcise me, that he was only standing his ground, sticking to his principles. And, thanks to hindsight, I did eventually see it. But in that moment, as the pain slowly dissolved and I remembered the threat of going back to hell, all I saw was red.

"You best get out of my face, boy," I spat between my teeth. I bit back the urge to lash out and beat my knuckles against his jaw. Dean cringed at the word boy, but bypassed it to give me a knowing, arrogant grin.

"Or what?" he challenged with confidence.

An electric fire of pure rage rolled from my chest and engulfed the blackened thing that used to be my soul. My fingers curled into tight fists that trembled at my sides, and I fought against the desire to lash out and strike him. To pick him up and send him sailing into the night.

_Come on. We're on a roll tonight. They're going to exorcise you if you don't._

_No. I can't hurt them._

"Yeah," Dean said with a small sneer when I did not retaliate. "That's what I thought."

_Do not let him send you back down there!_

" _Exorcizamus te…_ "

"Wait!"

The words cut through the ancient incantation like sharks teeth. Surprised, Dean and I both turned our heads to look at Sam. Sam's eyes were on me, and they were full of questions. But when his lips parted, he only asked one; "Which one of you is bound to Crowley?"

I tried to swallow past the blazing fury, tried to steady my rapid breath as I blinked at Sam.

"I don't know," I replied with a slight roil in my voice.

"Wait," Dean said, taking a couple of slow steps back, his eyes falling to me. "You're saying Max could be cursed instead of you?"

"We did both technically touch it," I said as the fire gradually died down, not completely, but enough to hold a conversation without tearing anyone's head off.

"So there's a chance we're left with a cursed meatsuit if we exorcise you?" Dean wants full clarification on what might happen if I were to vacate my host. I shrugged, and he glanced between me and his brother. He put his hands on his hips, hung his head and sighed. "Shit."

"If you're gonna stab me in the back and send me back downstairs, I… request you wait until I help figure this mess out," I spoke up, ruefully remembering not to bark orders. "I'm responsible for him. I'm not… I would prefer not to leave him with this. It's not like I did anything to deserve an exorcism, anyway."

"You did put Crowley on our ass," Dean said, turning his head to look at me. He glanced over to Sam for a second opinion, which he gave with a small shrug that seemed to say _why not?_ "Fine," he grumbled as he kicked a clump of dirt with the toe of his heavy black boots. "Just until we figure out how to unbind you from Crowley."

"Mystery," I spoke up. "I have to help her, too. I promised I would keep her safe."

"Man, you are just batting zero today," Dean scoffed, but his expression lacked irritation. He knew the dread that came with failing someone you've promised to protect, even if it is a complete stranger. "Fine. Yes. We will find Mystery. But if we run into Crowley, so help me god, I will give you to him myself."

"Well then. We better not run into Crowley."


	13. Demon vs. Angel

Rain lashed against the windows and pounded against the weathered pavement of the lonesome highway that cut through tall growing fields of corn. The roar of the Impala's engine collided with the slapping of water against the car's undercarriage to create a familiar white noise that echoed just beneath the melody of _Hey Joe_. The wipers scraped against the windshield in a painful whine, causing Dean to curse the worn blades that left a thick arch of water in his line of vision. He bobbed his head and twisted his neck in awkward angles in an effort to get a clear view of the road between the blurred streaks of water.

Aside from Dean's grumbling, no one said a word. In fact, the whole southbound trip through Michigan into Indiana and Illinois had been almost entirely wordless. Dean had tried to get a hold of Castiel a few dozen times during the commute, and had left irksome messages, but that was it. Neither of my sons pressed me for details of my daring escape from the demon's clutches, or questioned my ability to pull off such a feat. Dean was too preoccupied with trying to reach his celestial pal to wonder too long or too hard about things like how the demon sitting behind him had eluded Crowley for so long. Sam, on the other hand, appeared as though he were desperately trying to ignore me. He sat in the passenger seat with his body turned at a slight angle to remove me from his peripheral view.

The Impala was quiet, but my mind was not. Far from it. I was locked in an internal battle where guilt fiercely collided with lust. It was the same war I had been fighting since Baton Rouge, but this battle was different. This battle was violent. It was bloodthirsty and frantic. It was the Gettysburg to my Civil War, the Normandy to my second World War. It was Vietnam in its entirety.

It didn't help that Max was awake and full of piss and vinegar.

_Get out,_ he chanted at me, over and over until the words had lost all meaning. _Get out._

My fingers curled themselves into fists and I tried to concentrate on the music. The smooth growl of the Impala's engine. The back of Dean's head. Anything but the incessant whispers Max was drilling into my skull.

_Get out. Get out. Get out. Get out._

"Shut up!"

Dean's eyes reflected against the rearview mirror, his brow creased sternly in question. Sam, for the first time since Traverse City, turned to look at me. He gave me a discontented look as his gaze hesitantly lingered on me; he was torn between going back to ignoring me, and making sure I wasn't going to go nuclear in the car. I cleared my throat and shifted uncomfortably in my seat as they stared me down.

"We got a problem back there?" Dean's rough voice asked, his eyes flickering between the road and my reflection in the rearview mirror.

"Nope," I lied through my teeth. "Could use a cigarette, though."

"We'll be stopping soon enough," Dean said, offhandedly refusing to pull over for me or my habit. I sighed and sat back in my seat and stared distantly at the flat farmland that passed by in dull smears of green and brown.

_Get out, goddamnit!_

My fingers dug themselves into my thighs. I withheld the explosive desire to bark another heated response. God only knew what would happen if even a little of my rage were to slip out.

_Get the fuck out!_ Max raged, and an involuntary growl softly rumbled in my throat.

_No._

_Yes! I changed my mind. You do not have my permission to possess me._

_I never needed your permission,_ I reminded the voice.

_I thought you said you were different,_ Max grumbled. _But you're not, are you? You're just like the rest of those black-eyed bitches._

_No_ , I replied. _I'm smarter than the rest of those black-eyed bitches._

_That's not comforting, man._

_Look,_ I began with an internal sigh, closely eyeing Sam and Dean, who had returned their focus on the road ahead. _I'm sorry. This isn't exactly what I had mind when I crawled my way out of Hell. But I wasn't given much of a choice._

_Bullshit,_ Max's voice scoffed. _You could have let them kill you._

_You mean us,_ I reminded him.

_Yeah, man,_ Max said with a heavy sarcasm. _Cause I'm totally against that._ There was a long pause and for a minute I thought he might be done berating me. And then; _If they don't eventually kill us, they're gonna figure out who you are._

My muscles tensed, and I sat rigid in my seat.

_Don't go digging around in there,_ I warned my host against rooting around my memories.

_When they find out who you are,_ Max continued, ignoring my advice against searching for thoughts that were none of his business. _They're gonna be horrified their father didn't kill himself the instant he turned demon._

_Doubtful_ , I shot with hostility.

_John Winchester would never let himself become this,_ Max taunted scornfully, trying to push me over the edge, trying to force me out or get us killed; both, if he was lucky.

_You may have found a way to access my memories,_ I growled in return. _But you don't know shit about me._

_I know all that honor you used to be so full of went out the window the minute your eyes went black,_ Max said. _Lieutenant Pierce would be disappointed in you._

"Shut the fuck up, you ground-pounder grunt!"

_Goddamn it. That was out loud, wasn't it?_

I glanced up to see Sam and Dean had turned in their seats and were, once again, shooting discomforting glances my way. I blinked a few times, attempting to clear my vision and my head of the trance-like state I had been in during my mental discussion with Max. I coughed and shifted awkwardly, and absently reached out to stroke Freya's rough coat.

"Max," I explained my second sudden outburst. "He's being a whiny ass son of a bitch. Private can't seem to handle a little demon blood."

_You're the son of a bitch, you jarhead prick._

I flashed a grin, signaling to my boys that I was fine, and to Max that I found his insult anything but. Dean rolled his eyes and, giving Sam a stern look, pointed to his own eyes with his index and middle fingers before jabbing his thumb in my direction. Sam grumbled at Dean's wordless command, but didn't protest as Dean reached for the handle and popped his door open.

It was then that I noticed we weren't moving. The Impala was parked at a nearly-deserted rest stop alongside the Illinois highway. Rain continued to spill from the dreary skies above, temporarily catching on the canopy of old oak trees before cascading down in weighted droplets. Dean stepped out into the wet afternoon, and hurried across the parking lot to the dry shelter of the restrooms.

I seized the opportunity to stretch my legs, and exited the Impala without a word. Freya leapt joyfully from the constraints of the car and bounded instantly for the small wooded area on the opposite end of the parking lot. I followed my hound at a distance across the trim, wet grass, and it didn't take me long to realize that I, too, was being followed.

"Seriously?" I said without turning around. "You don't trust me enough by now to let me have a smoke in peace?"

"Do you really have to ask me that?" Sam's voice calmly returned from behind, and I sighed. I stopped to light a cigarette with my silver zippo, and turned to face him. The way he looked at me now was different than he had in the beginning; before, his eyes were filled with distrust and disdain, but now they appeared thoughtful, and worried.

"What, you and your brother trade roles or something?" I questioned bitterly with a mouthful of smoke. "He's the bad cop and you're the good cop now?"

"Neither of us are cops," Sam replied as he stuffed his hands inside his jacket pockets. "We've just been burned by too many demons." He paused to study me, watching a thin wisp of gray smoke dance at the end of my cigarette. "Where'd you serve?"

A small frown creased at my brow and my lips tightened. With my cigarette between my fingers, I vaguely scratched at the stubble under my chin and contemplated whether or not I would respond. I opened my mouth to speak, to say "'Nam", but instead I sucked in another breath of smoke. They already knew too much, and the way Sam's demeanor towards me had drastically changed, I could tell he had begun to suspect something.

"I know you're a military man," Sam said knowingly when I remained silent. "You did just call Max a grunt."

"And?" I challenged.

"And back in Vegas, you referred to Cas as an 'ate up motherfucker'," he said as he tilted his head slightly. "I've only ever heard that expression from a Marine."

"And?" I said again, using a cold and careless voice. "The fuck do you care? I'm a demon now. Last time I checked, you didn't give a damn about who I used to be."

"That was before…" Sam began, but trailed off. He shook his head and took a small step back, as if he had suddenly remembered my demonic condition. "Never mind," he muttered. "I thought for a minute…" He paused and a thin, faux smile awkwardly spread across his lips. "It's nothing."

I cocked a brow and tried to pretend like I didn't know what he was talking about. Like I was indifferent to what he might have thought, or, in all likelihood, was still thinking. I turned my gaze from him and moved my grip on my cigarette, holding it between my thumb and my index finger to create a makeshift shelter with my hand for my tobacco against the rain. I took a long drag of nicotine and stared across the parking lot where Dean stood under a weathered brown awning with his cell phone clutched in one hand and his flask in the other.

"What's your brother's deal?" I asked. Sam turned his frame slightly and followed my gaze to Dean.

"Oh," he said with a small, bothersome shrug. "He's what he likes to call a 'functional alcoholic'."

"Not the day drinking." I rolled my eyes, but I could feel the guilt knot in the pit of my stomach.

_You did that to him_ , Max whispered.

_Yeah_ , I somberly admitted. _I know._

"For a minute there, I thought Dean almost kind of liked me," I said and I pushed the shame away, stuffed it down into the dark pit where I stored every uncomfortable emotion.

"Yeah, well," Sam began with a shrug. "Dean almost kind of likes Crowley sometimes, too."

"Thanks," I scoffed sarcastically. He turned his eyes to the parking lot and watched a gold Lincoln Continental slowly pull its way across the pavement.

"Come on," Sam said, motioning for me to follow him as he lumbered across the wet grass towards the Impala. A long sigh of smoke tumbled past my lips as a wave of dread flooded my veins. The last place I wanted to be was in the backseat of that car, trapped in a cloud of stiff silence, feeling like I could explode at any moment.

_Demonism is not agreeing with you, John,_ I thought to myself. And, from somewhere in the back of my mind a dark voice – _my_ voice – replied; _Stop fighting what you are and let it agree with you._

I flexed my fingers, tried to shake the icy chill this thought had created. I closed my eyes and I drew in a slow, deep breath. I attempted to clear my mind of everything, but all I could think of was letting go. Abandoning the last shreds of humanity I held on to. Finally ending the internal conflict.

_I'm not opposed to suicide,_ Max gently whispered in my mind, fully aware of what I had been thinking.

I turned. I tried to ignore Max and his words, and instead searched for signs of Freya.

_You can't hold back forever,_ Max went on as I swept my eyes through the trees.

"Yeah, we'll fucking see," I mumbled.

I spied Freya cowering behind the thick trunk of a grand old oak tree. She trembled in fear as she warily peered at the parking lot, and she crouched with uncertainty; she couldn't decide if she should hide, or run like hell. When she noticed me, she shot me a pleading look, silently begging me to join her.

Freya was, for the most part, not a coward. She was the runt the other hellhounds used to pick on, but she was typically fairly fearless. Outside of Hell, I had only seen Freya cower in fear once, and the thing that had caused her to feel such terror had been Crowley. So when I saw her whimpering and shaking behind the tree, I knew we were not alone at that roadside reststop.

I turned on a quick heel, expecting to find the king of Hell waltzing smugly through the parking lot towards my sons. Only there was no Crowley. There were no demons at all. Just a dark haired man in a tan trenchcoat who, to Sam and Dean, looked like nothing short of a mortal man. But not to me. I could see the pure, blue-white light that glowed from within him, and encircled his head in a luminous halo. It was beautiful and awesome in the most literal sense.

And I hated it with every fiber of my being.

I had never seen anything like it before, but I knew that what I was looking at was an angel. A hot rage cascaded over me, flooding my body from head to toe with an uncontrollable fury that shook me to the core. I blinked, and I could feel my eyes change from blue to solid black. A low, menacing growl rolled through my throat and I automatically went for my Kurdish blade.

_No!_ Max bellowed in my mind, beyond horrified by what I was about to attempt. _Do not kill that angel, do you hear me? **Do not kill** –_

His pleas stopped abruptly, and my host passed into a deep slumber. I had unleashed the demon part of me – the part of me I had desperately been trying to withhold – and he was stronger than I was. He could force the resilient Max back to sleep as if it were nothing. And he could kill an angel.

_Not with that pig-sticker, you idiot,_ something somewhere inside of me said, but I didn't pay it any attention. My Kurdish blade couldn't kill him, but I was willing to bet the angel carried a weapon that could, and I was confident I could take it from him and use it against him.

I stormed across the wet grass towards the celestial being that conversed with my sons. He noticed me and my hostile advances almost immediately, and his eyes widened with surprise. His expression lacked completely the sense of fear I had hoped the vision of me madly marching towards him with black eyes and a sharp blade would invoke. Instead, he seemed genuinely astonished by my presence; baffled and a little confused, but not remotely scared.

Which was infuriating.

"I'm going to fucking kill you, you ate up motherfucker!" I growled, and his face smoothed into understanding.

"What the fuck, Maddox?!" Dean cried in outrage, mortified by my behavior towards his friend, but I barely heard him. I barely heard anything as I descended upon the angel, and drew my blade back to gain enough inertia to drive it through his chest. My hand, clutched tightly around the bone hilt of the blade, descended with a savage force, but the angel expertly blocked my attempt to stab him. He clasped his fingers around my forearm, and his electric blue eyes gazed upon me with an empathetic air. I growled at his sympathies and threw my left fist towards his face, but the angel caught my hand in his. My right leg came up and I forcefully kicked him square in the stomach. The angel lost his grip on me as he stumbled backwards, but only a few steps, and he held onto his balance.

"Stop!"

I could hear Dean's desperate barking above the rhythm of my pounding heart, but I ignored him. Instead, I swung my blade at the angel again, aiming this time for his head. His arm lashed out at mine, striking me in the inside of my elbow with such a force it caused me to lose my grip on my mostly-useless blade. My left fist swung up and struck the angel's jaw, and he fell back a tiny step.

"Goddamn it, I said stop!" Dean barked.

I threw my right fist in the angel's direction, but he swayed out of my way and took another step back.

"It's okay, Dean," the angel's deep voice assured my son with his eyes set on me. "I won't hurt him."

"Fuck him!" Dean said. "Don't let _him_ hurt _you_!"

The angel's brow folded gently into a look of confusion, but he quickly dismissed it when he noticed that I was charging him. A violent growl escaped my lips as I tackled him to the ground where I straddled him at his waist.

"You!" I snarled and struck him in the cheekbone with my right fist. "You did this to me, you son of a bitch!"

I threw another punch, but he caught my fist with ease.

"I know," he admitted with a calm regret. "I'm sorry."

His placid and apologetic demeanor was infuriating, and I couldn't help the low, demonic grumble that bubbled up from my gut. I drew my fist back, ready to wipe his righteous empathy off his face, when I was stopped quite unexpectedly from behind. A torrid liquid slapped me against the back of the head and scorched my flesh. I gasped in agony as the acidic substance rolled down my neck, but soon the pain paved the way to a new kind of fury. I twisted around, prepared to utilize my demonic abilities to send whomever had splashed me with holy water sailing through the parking lot.

And then I saw Sam's face. He was brave and fierce, but he was scared, especially once he saw my arm outstretched, ready to push him back, ready to hurt him. I blinked. My eyes returned from black to blue, and I gradually lowered my arm. Sam's expression fell to a look of pure shock as he stared at me with wide eyes and a heavy breath.

_He knows._

Dean's hands suddenly planted themselves against my chest and he shoved me backwards with a forceful thrust. I allowed myself to tumble to the wet grass below where I sat, shaking with rage and remorse as Dean helped the angel to his feet.

"You okay?" he asked with concern, tightly gripping the sleeve of the angel's trench coat.

"Yes, I'm fine," the angel replied as he dusted himself. Dean's brow folded with a cold hatred as he glared down at me.

"What the fuck was that?" he barked aggressively.

"It's okay, Dean," the angel said, his eyes on me. "He has every right to be upset. I'm sure it's difficult for him to hold back the animosity he holds for my kind in his current state."

I shakily rose to my feet and exhaled a slow, uneven breath. I glanced over to Sam, who continued to gawk at me with a terrified awe, and I quickly looked away, bowing my head in shame.

"What are you talking about?" Dean asked, looking between the angel and me. "You know him?"

"Not personally, no," the angel shook his head. "But I do, of course, know who he is." He glanced to Dean with confusion laced across his brow. "Why didn't you tell me the demon you were working with was your father?"

**Author's Note:**

> Obligatory (but probably unnecessary) Disclaimer: I OWN NOTHING! I'm not even entirely sure I want to claim ownership of my OCs, which are my brainchildren, but I'm not sure I want to claim responsibility for them.


End file.
